I think Netanyahu belongs in prison, and Trump, the less said the better, but: couldn't have happened to a nicer unauthorized weapons-grade uranium enrichment facility dug into the side of a mountain hours outside of population centers.
If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading up on the GBU-57 "bunker buster" bomb, because it is some Merrie Melodies Acme brand munitions. It's deliberately as heavy as they can make a bomb, not with explosives but just with mass. They should have shaped it like a giant piano.
Findecanor 11 hours ago [-]
> I think Netanyahu belongs in prison
For those who didn't know: There are multiple charges of corruption against him, which he is probably guilty of.
But as long as he can lead Israel in a state of emergency, he can have those delayed, or perhaps even work around them.
This new war against Iran also diverts attention away from what is happening in Gaza. The starvation has entered a new critical phase.
The populace has been concentrated, so they can no longer work the fields.
The number of sites that are handing out food aid have been greatly reduced, and dozens of people are killed every day by Israeli soldiers while they are trying to get to the sites.
oldgradstudent 4 hours ago [-]
>There are multiple charges of corruption against him, which he is probably guilty of.
For anyone who is not following the trial, as soon as the prosecution's case-in-chief was over, the judges publicly notified the prosecution that they should drop the bribery charges as they are unlikely to be able to prove them.
The prosecution case for briberty was built on a hypothesized meeting in which Netanyahu supposedely instructed the director general of the ministry of communications to serve the interests of Elovitch.
During cross examination, the defense managed to prove conclusively that such a meeting, as described, could not have occurred. They also showed that the presocution had the evidence to show it could not have occurred.
Don't assume guilt or innocence based on heavily politisized reporting.
Why are people getting in the weeds about these specific cases? Isn’t, you know, all the genociding a good enough reason for us to want him to be imprisoned? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills reading this thread.
the 20 years leading up to trump, calling every republican a nazi, has completely destroyed the meaning of the word. trump is actually doing a lot of fascist leaning stuff this time around, and you could possibly use that word appropriately but it is currently meaningless.
rafterydj 3 hours ago [-]
"flippantly tossing words around devalues them and debases the conversation." Agreed- and that's exactly what you are doing with the word, "no."
Soldiers are murdering an entire population- or as many of them as they can, seemingly- for political purposes that desire that population to simply not exist anymore. To say that is _not_ a genocide devalues the meaning of the word.
mylons 3 hours ago [-]
to say that is what is happening is completely disingenuous. seemingly something happened by the democratically elected government of Gaza on 10/7
yibg 2 hours ago [-]
A democratically elected government invaded Iraq and killed a lot of Iraqis.
If Iraq got some sort of super advanced technology that made them the superpower in the world, would they be justified if they:
- Started bombing US cities, including hospitals, schoolsetc and killing US civilians?
- Would they be justified in cutting off food and water supply to all of the US?
- Sniping kids and people waving white flags in the head?
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
> seemingly something happened by the democratically elected government of Gaza on 10/7
Gaza doesn't have a democratically elected government, and one of the reasons Palestine (of which Gaza is a region) does not have a democratically elected government is that Israel has exercised its power as an occupying power administering large parts of Palestine directly and controlling the rest indirectly to prevent elections which have been jointly agreed on by the two main factions.
And they’ve done that specifically to maintain the current violent and divided status quo, which they leverage as pretext to continue their long policy of genocide.
ath3nd 2 hours ago [-]
What happened on 10/7 was terrible but a terror attack doesn't make what Israel does to Palestine less of a genocide.
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
There is a reason officials of both Hamas and Israel have been charged by the ICC.
mcv 28 minutes ago [-]
They're not "murdering an entire population"; although many thousands of Palestinians have been killed, it's still a tiny percentage of the total population.
But it's not necessary to murder an entire population for it to count as genocide. Any attempt to destroy a people counts, including forced sterilization, re-education, mass deportations, etc.
But it's also clear that Israel has explicitly targeted civilians, help workers, journalists, refugee camps, food distribution, and I've even read about them shooting people hiding in churches. None of those are valid targets.
ath3nd 2 hours ago [-]
> is it a genoicde?
Yes, it is.
It fits all the criteria of genocide AND ethnic cleansing.
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Read. Note that numbers don't matter, intent does. Kidnapping a single kid can almost be genocide and an attack with 1000 civilian victims can fail to qualify as a genocide. Now go and google "Hamas charter" and read. Intent is pretty damn clear.
Israel is not intending to destroy an ethnic group. They're simply not. Hamas, in contrast, is. The organization's entire existence is centered around their intent to commit genocide.
This is also the reason Russia's actions in Ukraine, meant to destroy the Ukrainian nation and identity, ARE warcrimes but Ukraine's (much more limited) actions inside Russia don't qualify. Despite the fact that Ukraine is killing people in Russia. Of course propaganda bots are trying to confuse both issues.
So in other words, by the UN definition, by the ACTUAL criteria:
1) Israel's war in Gaza is NOT a genocide.
2) Hamas' attack on 10/7, intended to wipe Israel off the map by killing Jews, was genocide.
3) a whole number of Hamas' actions outside of the 10/7 attack ALSO qualify as genocide, as the intent is clear (such as their actions when they got elected, to give an example of something that DOES qualify as genocide against Palestinians ... but of course committed by Hamas)
The simple fact is that Hamas, and frankly a lot of Palestinians, just like Russia, want to commit genocide. That is what makes the difference according to the criteria.
clueless 35 minutes ago [-]
Sure, openly written documents can help with evaluation of intent, but how can we ever define someone's intent (something that is only in people's hearts)? We know of many legal cases where the intent is obvious but not easily provable.
spwa4 16 minutes ago [-]
Well, if they widely publicize a document that their intent is to erase X off the map, like Hamas did [1], like Russia did [2], then we know.
Israel ALSO publicizes their intent in Gaza, and ... it's not eliminating en entire population, it's "Israel's campaign has four stated goals: to destroy Hamas, to free the hostages, to ensure Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, and to return displaced residents of Northern Israel." [3]
So, again, the conclusion is that Hamas commits genocide, including against Palestinians (and Israeli, and Jews, and Lebanese, and Jordanians, and ... as evidenced in other documents, and Israel does not.
It's even worse than that, because READ the documents ... Hamas explicitly states that committing genocide in Palestine and Israel against Jews and "Palestinian traitors" ... is the start. They clearly state their intent to do so worldwide, on essentially everyone, as that will bring the islamic second coming. Yes, really, that's what it says.
But of course the only explanation can be that Palestinians have been lying about their intent when they're killing people and Israel has been lying about their intent too. That's the only possible explanation.
What Israel is doing checks the first and third items in your list. They kill members of the group, and not just in Gaza; in the Westbank, it's common for illegal settlers to attack Palestinian towns, including killing people. The IDF does nothing to stop them, but if Palestinians try to defend themselves against this aggression, IDF shows up to stop that.
The wall separates farmers from their land, and has made it nearly impossible for Palestinians to live their life, to go to work, etc. And Gaza is a ghetto; an open-air prison, with way too many people, and no way for them to build a normal life. Israel has also kicked Palestinians out of their homes in order to give them to Jews.
I'm not denying that Hamas is also genocidal; they clearly and openly are. And probably more so in intent, but a lot less so in capability. Israel has been killing and disrupting a lot more Palestinian lives than the other way around.
spwa4 9 minutes ago [-]
Can you read? Intent is required. Otherwise, the list does not matter. The police kidnaps people in pursuit of traffic violations too. Intent matters. Hamas declares their intent to be genocidal, Israel also declares their intent, and it's not genocide.
Second these are the basics, not the entire treaty. ANY object used by any adversary for military purposes, attacks or coordinating attacks, including hospitals and schools, is a valid target.
And that is ALSO not the entire story. For example, most targets can be attacked as soon as any commander thinks they're used by the enemy for attacks, without any warning. This applies to houses for example. But not hospitals. For hospitals, a warning must be given first, then, I believe minimum 2 hours after the warning, an attack against a hospital is legal.
There is NOTHING that has absolute immunity. To give another example: if a faction fires from within a protest of otherwise innocent people, returning fire is not a warcrime. Not even when innocents get hit.
cluckindan 1 hours ago [-]
Did you read your own list?
Based on news reporting, what Israel is doing in Gaza checks multiple items.
drcongo 1 hours ago [-]
I don't think I've ever seen such spectacular mental gymnastics. Absolutely incredible.
drcongo 3 hours ago [-]
It's genocide. And the reason we were using the word nazi for twenty years was to try to warn everyone what was happening, but nobody listened, and now you got nazis.
mylons 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
RIMR 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not going to wait for the situation to get so severe that it has an effect on that graph before I start using words like 'genocide'.
2muchcoffeeman 1 hours ago [-]
Calling everyone Nazis wasn’t to warn everyone. Fairly sure it was mostly just virtue signalling. Everyone using the word wasn’t around when WWII happened.
The result probably just desensitised people to what was going on since every little infraction the right did seemed to make them a nazi.
tomrod 2 hours ago [-]
The current campaign against Gazans satisfies the criteria for genocide.
Here is the UN definition for genocide. While you normally can't prove a negative, each jot and tittle of the definition is clear in the Gazans' case, so I leave it to you to figure out why you're so cautious to call a spade a spade and call a genocide a genocide.
> The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people. Later on, Raphäel Lemkin led the campaign to have genocide recognised and codified as an international crime.
> Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/96-I). It was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Convention has been ratified by 153 States (as of April 2022). The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly stated that the Convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law. This means that whether or not States have ratified the Genocide Convention, they are all bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law. The ICJ has also stated that the prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm of international law (or ius cogens) and consequently, no derogation from it is allowed.
> The definition of the crime of genocide as contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention was the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States in 1948 at the time of drafting the Convention. Genocide is defined in the same terms as in the Genocide Convention in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 6), as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions. Many States have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law; others have yet to do so.
> # Definition
> Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
> ## Article II*
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
> Killing members of the group;
> Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
> Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
> *Elements of the crime*
> The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.
> The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
> 1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
> 2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
> 2a. Killing members of the group
> 2b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
> 2c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
> 2d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
> 2e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
> The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique. In addition, case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.
> Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.”
Please don’t delete this thread. Yes it’s getting pretty heated, but it’s by far the most rational discussion of this topic I’ve seen in a while.
Plus I’ve learnt a few things, which tends to be a positive signal for quality
edanm 8 hours ago [-]
> But as long as he can lead Israel in a state of emergency, he can have those delayed, or perhaps even work around them.
Well, that's kind of true. The Iran war has certainly stopped proceedings against Netanyahu, because the courts are shut down - along with much of the country.
That said, this can't last much because the economy is completely shut down, and the trials against him were ongoing, eve amidst the Gaza war.
So he can't just indefinitely put off the trial against him.
geysersam 6 hours ago [-]
> So he can't just indefinitely put off the trial against him.
Unless he changes the law, which he's tried on multiple occasions
amelius 11 hours ago [-]
ICC also has an arrest warrant against Netanyahu.
Findecanor 10 hours ago [-]
For events in Gaza last year, yes. The corruption charges are older and domestic only.
ncallaway 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, but it does significantly limit any "flee the country" options for escaping domestic charges.
t-3 6 hours ago [-]
Not all that much. Practically speaking, NATO countries will not arrest him.
amelius 6 hours ago [-]
ICC is being hosted by a NATO country ...
t-3 6 hours ago [-]
Netanyahu has visited countries which are signatories and not been arrested. Even politicians in the Netherlands have said that they will not arrest him if he comes.
amelius 6 hours ago [-]
Those visits only happened because he was given the guarantee of not being arrested. I.e. they happened in the name of diplomacy.
Also, don't mix up a politician's personal opinions and official policy.
beepbopboopp 5 hours ago [-]
Well mostly because the charges are insane and political. Anyone who tells you there is a clear bad guy and good guy in the Israel v. Palestine conflict is trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.
Its a complex, long standing war and not the responsibility of any single person.
ricardobeat 5 hours ago [-]
The main charge is for the war crime of “starvation as a method of warfare”.
There is nothing political about that, and any measure of righteousness in what lead to it is irrelevant.
beepbopboopp 4 hours ago [-]
You're referring to the cutting off of supply lines into places where the enemy has chosen to embed themselves. With almost infinite video proof of misappropriation of all humanitarian aid (food and supplies) of their citizens during the conflict.
This is literally how every war since time has gone. The "Starvation" nomenclature is propganda, which to their credit they are CRUSHING at.
amelius 45 minutes ago [-]
> misappropriation of all humanitarian aid
International organizations already warned that this might happen if the Israelis and USA would try to supply the aid directly by themselves, because this requires a level of expertise that they simply don't have. However, Netanyahu wanted to take matters in his own hands and the result was another crime against humanity.
catlifeonmars 3 hours ago [-]
Yep. Israel is still a party to the starvation and restriction of humanitarian aid. Hamas notwithstanding. Both sides can be evil. Two wrongs don’t make a right etc etc.
amelius 4 hours ago [-]
> With almost infinite video proof
One-sided proof. The Isreali already made themselves impossible by banning the press.
rabidonrails 4 hours ago [-]
We should be clear about these cases that are brought against him (I'm not saying he isn't guilty, but context is important here):
Case 1 - as Minister of Communications he, allegedly, tried to get a tax extension for a company whose owners had given him expensive cigars and jewelry to his wife (worth $3100). The extension was not granted. He also tried to get a US visa for one of the owners.
Case 2 - One of the newspapers in Israel said that if he gave them advantages over a competing newpaper they would paint Bibi and his family in a positive light in their coverage
*Case 3 - seemingly similar to Case 2, a large news website offered to portray Bibi in a better light if he would push through regulatory changes as Minisiter of Communications.
oldgradstudent 4 hours ago [-]
> Case 3 - seemingly similar to Case 2, a large news website offered to portray Bibi in a better light if he would push through regulatory changes as Minisiter of Communications.
Favorable coverage was the original charge (סיקור אוהד). However, since this website was exteremely hostile to Netanyahu, the charge was changed to being unusually responsive* to requests from Netanyahu's spokespeople (הענות חריגה).
mdhb 4 hours ago [-]
Then you know… there’s the whole crimes against humanity thing from the ICC too…
nahnahno 4 hours ago [-]
Based on their heavily biased view of the Gaza conflict, based on their Arabic affiliations and the Hamas-run Gaza government’s reporting.
michaelmrose 3 hours ago [-]
They used a computer program to target hamas members based on signals and other intelligence inclusive of people who are not in any way combatants.
Bombs including and especially large not particularly sophisticated bombs were dropped on entire buildings preferentially at night to ensure the target would be likely to be home with their wife and family and you know any other families in the same building.
Previously such strikes with very large numbers of collateral damage were authorized to kill top members of Hamas. Now they were authorized to hopefully an 18 year old cook irrespective of the 7 children that would burn to death painfully in the fire.
They recovered around 150 hostages at the cost of 50,000 children being killed or injured.
Remember that Gaza isn't a democracy. Hamas is 50k people out of 2M of which the number of people that actually have decision making power would fit in a small room. Most people in Gaza aren't Hamas.
Israel is presently starving a large city full of people under the pretense of forcing them to leave knowing that can't do so. Starving people isn't morally different than herding them all into gas chambers.
If there is a place that needs immediate intervention it is using force to enforce peace in Gaza before all the remaining people in Gaza die.
breakyerself 4 hours ago [-]
They're starving 2 million people in broad daylight and basically everyone in the highest levels of the administration has said blatantly genocidal shit, but yeah it's all just bias.
486sx33 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ezbie 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
EvgeniyZh 3 hours ago [-]
Bringing up Al Jazeera as an unbiased source about Israel is weird.
Amnesty international emitted report that say "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed":
> As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.
Somehow people cite it as a proof of genocide.
BBC has produced a documentary with narrator being son of Hamas official, and were forced to apologize for that [1]. They sheleved another documentary with impartiality concerns. They have contributors calling to "burn Jews like Hitler" [2].
So yeah, there are unbiased critics of Israel, just none of those you listed
> Amnesty international emitted report that say "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed"
Source? Perhaps older report, before the country dropped any pretense of respecting international norms on human rights. Today Amnesty sees a clear case of genocide underway against indigenous palestinians in Gaza. See https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
EvgeniyZh 2 hours ago [-]
The citation is from page 101 of the report you linked. Have you read it?
Qem 2 hours ago [-]
Let me get the full paragraph:
> 5.5.2 STATE INTENT
The jurisprudence on genocidal intent on the part of a state is more limited. The ICJ has accepted that, in the absence of direct proof, specific intent may be established indirectly by inference for purposes of state responsibility, and has adopted much of the reasoning of the international tribunals.380 However, its rulings on inferring intent can be read extremely narrowly, in a manner that would potentially preclude a state from having genocidal intent alongside one or more additional motives or goals in relation to the conduct of its military operations. As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict. The organization considers that the Genocide Convention must be interpreted in a manner that ensures that genocide remains prohibited in both peacetime and in war and that ICJ jurisprudence should not be read to effectively preclude a finding of genocide during war.
Regarding state intent, it appears this means that Amnesty is just remarking that a state can't launder genocide intent by parallel constructing additional motives or goals that are legitimate sounding.
So that does not support your conclusion that "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed". Alas, the text is misquoted, as it doesn't appear anywhere in the document. Those are not Amnesty words, neither the text actually in the report supports it.
Spooky23 9 hours ago [-]
Wasn’t there some sort of the parliamentary issue with his government that this new war will push off as well?
reactordev 7 hours ago [-]
War crimes are only crimes when the war ends… start another war.
arendtio 3 hours ago [-]
Recently, I read about the Qibya massacre [1]. Sometimes, even the end of war does not seem to bring any justice, and you wonder what kind of people manage to become prime minister...
Oh I’m definitely not defending the man. He’s scum. And you’re totally right - so many atrocities are swept under the rug.
avip 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
borski 8 hours ago [-]
It’s an opinion. People are allowed to form those with imperfect information.
avip 8 hours ago [-]
But what is the opinion based on? Has OP read the filings or something?
dontTREATonme 7 hours ago [-]
No because if they had they’d know that the entire case hinges on a star witness whose testimony is based on the eye twitching of an old man. Even the judges (of the case) who hate BN thought this was ridiculous.
broast 8 hours ago [-]
If they waited to know the outcome then it wouldn't be a probability
Windchaser 5 hours ago [-]
Is OJ Simpson "probably guilty" of murder?
andsoitis 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mcv 7 hours ago [-]
> disable Hamas (who embeds amongst civilians)
Hamas recruits among civilians. Radicalized civilians. And Israel has just radicalized even more Palestinians, creating even better recruiting ground for Hamas.
Israel has supported Hamas because it's a very convenient enemy for them. Hamas wants to wipe Israel from the map, and to Israel, that means a powerful Hamas controlling Palestine justifies their wiping Palestine off the map.
During the 1980s, when the PLO was the dominant force in Palestine and wanted a two-state solution, Israel supported the much less influential Hamas in order to undermine PLO's position. And I think in 2017, Israel asked Qatar to support Hamas.
Note that the Netanyahu government only goes after the people on the ground, not the leadership abroad. And they clearly have no problem killing and radicalizing more Palestinian civilians.
breppp 5 hours ago [-]
> During the 1980s, when the PLO was the dominant force in Palestine and wanted a two-state solution, Israel supported the much less influential Hamas in order to undermine PLO's position. And I think in 2017, Israel asked Qatar to support Hamas
You have got that the other way around. Hamas was founded in 1987 during the Intifada, before the PLO started supporting a two state solution in 1988. The reason the PLO made that shift was that it was in exile and a new leadership in Palestine was formed (including Hamas), and they were afraid they will lose relevancy.
In 1987 and going forward Hamas fought Israel, so claiming Israel supported it is paradoxical.
Qatari money was transferred to Hamas prior to any Israeli involvement as early as 2007, sometimes in cash through the tunnels.
In 2017 the Palestinian Authority refused to transfer taxes collected to the Hamas Gaza government or pay Israel for Gaza's electricity, leading to an economical downturn in Gaza.
Because of the pending humanitarian crisis that would probably end in starvation due to Gaza less than stellar economy, whose blame would be put on Israel as is accustomed, Qatar was used as a lesser evil solution. It allowed Israel not to directly fund the Hamas government, which except for its military wing, is also its schools, hospitals, municipal and all other civilians functions.
The narrative you are repeating also repeats itself as Israel created Hezbollah or even as far as the US created ISIS, 9/11 was an inside job etc
The source of this narrative in my opinion is the old racist imperialist narrative where the so-called natives are merely children incapable of agency. Here in the post colonialist sense, if there is any evil actor around, its actions or mere existence must quickly be attributed to the West/Israel, or else cognitive dissonance abounds
5 hours ago [-]
phatskat 5 hours ago [-]
Let’s not forget that Benjamin Netanyahu even said once (that I know of from a recording) that the best thing for Israel is a strong Hamas.
f1shy 4 hours ago [-]
I would really want to see that. Do you have a link?
andsoitis 3 hours ago [-]
> Note that the Netanyahu government only goes after the people on the ground, not the leadership abroad.
Israel under scharon has given gaza back including the settlements and got for that 700 civilians who followed the hamas members to murder, rape and kill children on the 7th October. Fuck all those fanatics ..
senderista 5 hours ago [-]
I kinda miss those secular Palestinian militants...
zzzeek 5 hours ago [-]
This is exactly what's happening and I wish people would say it more often. Plenty of reporting showed the IDF had indication oct 7 attacks were about to happen and warnings were ignored.
xdennis 5 hours ago [-]
Palestinians are taught from kindergarten to hate Jews (now labeled Zionists) with textbooks and TV shows paid by EU money. They couldn't possible hate Israelis more if they wanted to.
When Hamas brought cars with naked and unconscious/dead Israeli women back into Gaza, mobs of cheering Palestinians formed to spit on the women and hit them with their shoes.
That is how they behaved before the Israeli response has a chance to radicalize them. There's nothing Israel can do to radicalize them further, it can only use force to contain them.
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
> before the Israeli response has a chance to radicalize them
You… you think that was the start of the process?
barbazoo 7 hours ago [-]
“Head of the dragon” what’s that supposed to mean? Reminds me of language used by Israel citizens and government to describe the regime without pointing to hard facts. As far as I can see there’s many aggressors in that area. Israel is a main one.
throwawaybob420 7 hours ago [-]
You’re going to be brow beaten and down voted but you’re speaking the truth.
What other country is attacking or has attacked its neighbors as Israel has? What other country has been executing a live-streamed genocide that you can see the outcomes of on Instagram?
Just yesterday I saw a video of a mother comforting her infant whose leg was blown off by Israeli bombs. And yet these religious fanatics are the ones we call our “allies”.
stickfigure 6 hours ago [-]
> What other country is attacking or has attacked its neighbors as Israel has?
This statement is so laughably ignorant of the modern history of the Middle East that I cannot believe it is not satire.
throwawaybob420 6 hours ago [-]
Oh my bad, as a person born and raised in the Middle East, I should’ve known my poor intellect could never match yours.
How many countries has Israel attacked in last year alone?
stickfigure 5 hours ago [-]
You asked a question with an easily googleable answer. There's the Iran-Iraq War and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, just off top of my head. Plus countless civil wars, many orchestrated and funded by Iran. And that's just since I've been watching the news; there were many more wars before.
t-3 4 hours ago [-]
Iraq invaded Iran - that wasn't a war of Iranian aggression. Or is your point just that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was just as bad as Israel, so Israel is OK somehow?
throwawaybob420 4 hours ago [-]
No, my question was how many countries has Israel attacked in the last year. I know this might be outside your wheelhouse as a former CTO for some random porn company but I have faith you can use google
beepbopboopp 5 hours ago [-]
This person is blinded by hate and brings absolutely no facts or desire for understadning.
Israel has pro-actively invaded one country ever (Egypt because the 6 day war was coming). Spinning Israel as a colonist is historically crazy as theyve ceded more land than theyve picked up.
wredcoll 3 hours ago [-]
Tell me more about the land they've ceded and where they got it from...
t-3 4 hours ago [-]
What is Israel doing in Syria and Lebanon if not an invasion?
throwawaybob420 4 hours ago [-]
More like blinded by the corpses of slain children I’ve seen pile up through genocide but you do you I guess.
quickthrowman 3 hours ago [-]
Israel was invaded simultaneously by all of its neighbors more than once in the last 80 years.
animuchan 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throwawaybob420 6 hours ago [-]
are you seriously trying to bring up killed civilians while Israel has been committing a genocide against the Palestinian people? Man you are OBTUSE
I’m not even going to bring up the thousands of Palestinians Israel has arrested and kept in prison for the crime of being Palestinian…
Edit: oh your Israeli rofl that checks out
f1shy 4 hours ago [-]
HN seems to be pretty full of that. Really bad.
MSFT_Edging 8 hours ago [-]
What is the difference between chasing an imagined "Hamas" among the civilians and just starving and killing civilians?
andsoitis 8 hours ago [-]
> chasing an imagined "Hamas" among the civilians
what do you mean by this?
that there is no Hamas, or that they aren't embedded amongst civilians, or something else?
latentcall 1 hours ago [-]
Where is Hamas? How come I see Ukraine vs Russia combat footage every single day but only dead children out of Palestine? Where’s the IDF/Hamas combat footage? It’s because the IDF is just bombing kids.
There is no Hamas and if there is there’s barely any
8note 5 hours ago [-]
that what israel is targeting is unrelated to hamas being at some point embedded amongst civilians, or whether they exist at all.
israel is instead making up its own hamas, and then bombing the food aid to target the civilians.
Hikikomori 5 hours ago [-]
Israel is clearly capable of targeted attacks, like hitting one bedroom in a large apartment building in Iran. Yet they continue to use block sized bombs in Gaza.
IOT_Apprentice 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
avip 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rekrsiv 8 hours ago [-]
Let's rephrase it then: Why aren't journalists allowed to corroborate facts on the ground and even are murdered by Israel on a regular basis, while Israel is allowed to genocide an entire population away?
avip 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rekrsiv 7 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry, I couldn't detect an answer there. Are there any statements you would like to debate?
gosub100 7 hours ago [-]
comments like this add negative value to the discussion. it shows complete refusal to engage on a professional level. If you can't articulate your thoughts or disagree with someone without taunting them, why do you comment at all?
IOT_Apprentice 8 hours ago [-]
lol. Embeds among civilians? Like the IDF does, with military underground bases? Disable Hamas via genocide? By destroying every hospital in Gaza? By raping Palestinian women & girls? By looting their homes? By bombing and starving them?
Exactly who is the Dragon here? You think Israel’s bloodlust is done with Iran? They want much more Territory across the Middle East. They are occupying parts of Cypress right now, And have craving for parts of Egypt and more.
f1shy 4 hours ago [-]
Territory?! What the hell are you talking about?! They offered to retain a tiny portion of territory some decades ago, and that was rejected. You can say whatever you want, but this is not about land. That is ignorance. Sorry.
billy99k 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rekrsiv 8 hours ago [-]
Why not mention the events of the previous half century? Just admit you were born yesterday and go study history so we can at least have an honest conversation.
mhb 5 hours ago [-]
Good idea. But maybe start a few hundred years before half a century ago.
billy99k 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
esseph 7 hours ago [-]
Buddy most of the world is very sympathetic to the Jewish plight.
What we cannot tolerate anymore is the violence of the Israeli state. It has become the monster.
i80and 7 hours ago [-]
I really don't think you want to go down the "bombs hospitals and murders innocent people as their main goal" road if you're ride or die for Israel
throwawaybob420 6 hours ago [-]
When I’m in a bomb hospitals and murder civilians contest, but my competition is Israel
plemer 7 hours ago [-]
Netanyahu’s actions endanger Jews. The rest of the world sees this for what it is. No one believes you. Disgusting.
It's a weird one. I don't disagree with your post, still, what is "approved" nukes? A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them. Then Israel also got them, also "unauthorized", but countries who don't mind pretend they don't know.
In the end there is no authorized and unauthorized nukes, only a calculus of power.
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
> It's a weird one. I don't disagree with your post, still, what is "approved" nukes?
2. Cross out the countries which are attacked for having nuclear weapons.
Here's your definition of approved nukes.
amelius 10 hours ago [-]
I suppose what "approved" means is in the eye of the beholder.
JohnBooty 17 hours ago [-]
I don't know that it's the best or fairest situation, but I do know I like it better than "every country is allowed to have nukes."
seydor 17 hours ago [-]
recent events show that instead, every country should have nukes if they want to be safe.
Russia attacked ukraine because they didn't. Iran got attacked because it didn't. North korea isnt attacked because they have. That's the moral of the story.
It's "make nukes first, ask questions later"
normie3000 16 hours ago [-]
> every country should have nukes if they want to be safe
This seems analogous to the idea that every household should have guns if they want to be safe.
crystal_revenge 5 hours ago [-]
The point parent is in making is that this strike against Iran demonstrates, that yes indeed you do need nukes to be safe and that's one of the major risks of this action.
Going with your analogy, this would be the same as if police basically ignored all home invasion/trespassing laws such that the only houses that criminals entered were in fact those of undefended home owners. In this scenario, it would be demonstrated, by this policy, that yes home owners need to own guns to be safe.
To your point, if you don't want a world where it's safer for home owners to own guns, than you need to ensure there are policies in place to create a world where that was true. The lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that, if you don't have nuclear weapons, your sovereignty is always at the mercy of nations that do.
A world where every country needs nuclear weapons to remain sovereign is similarly undesirable (on a larger scale) to a country where every home needs to have guns to be safe. However we're on a path with nuclear weapons where that is unfortunately not the reality we are creating.
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
A handful of nuclear weapons won't keep a country safe. They would also need a credible second-strike deterrent.
Relations between sovereign states are fundamentally anarchic. There are no world police. The UN and other international institutions have little or no real power, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty is only enforceable through kinetic action by other countries when it suits their interests.
twelve40 2 hours ago [-]
NK can have a handful of submarine-based missiles that threaten to wipe out say Seoul or LA for example, even after the first strike. It's not a guarantee by any means but it does raise the bar and would probably prevent a situation like the current one.
johnnyanmac 3 hours ago [-]
6 months ago I woildnt have disagreed. Be ause law enforcement had guns for you.
But if law enforcement is not only not doing their job but actively threatening you: well, I guess 2A won this time.
MSFT_Edging 8 hours ago [-]
Please note ICE is doing operations in blue cities against law abiding immigrants at hearings because to go after either actual criminals or the gun infested red areas would be a danger to life and limb.
Turns out, making yourself a more dangerous target works to an extent.
LeapingPanda 14 minutes ago [-]
> operations ... against law abiding immigrants ...
Putting aside ICE tactics, if their immigration status is not legal, then by definition they are not law abiding citizens.
Unless you are privy the status of any planned or ongoing ICE operations against criminals, you have no idea what they are doing in that regard.
Law enforcement at all levels needs checks along with better direction in carrying out their duties. However, allowing people to continue living in an immigration limbo is not a solution. Sanctuary cities leave illegal immigrants unprotected.
8note 5 hours ago [-]
a different reason is that the red areas are currently in power, and have a say in where ICE deploys. its explicitly a civil war styled attack on blue state sovereignty, rather than anything about guns
bufferoverflow 6 hours ago [-]
> against law abiding immigrants
That's a lie. They broke the law when they entered the country illegally. Then some of them committed more crimes.
johnnyanmac 3 hours ago [-]
The immigrants in thr court houses are breaking the law? Sounds like a judge should determine that.
bufferoverflow 56 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
crooked-v 3 hours ago [-]
Most immigration offenses are specifically not crimes, so that the government doesn't have to give the people involved legal proceedings.
erkt 8 hours ago [-]
ICE must cast a wide net in blue cities because they are not sharing data on the criminal undocumented residents. They are shielding the illegal migrants who are already in jail or released on bond. Red areas are not shielding their criminal element and there is less need for such a wide net. Sanctuary cities ignoring the constitution and delegation of powers to do whatever they want is causing much of the escalation.
righthand 7 hours ago [-]
You will love this amendment (14th) from the US Constitution then, it’s a banger with it’s opening text that describes how states are responsible for protecting the people in their borders and giving them due process, citizen or not:
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
You know because it’s hard to make a case about being a country of rights, due process, law and order if you don’t extend that to the people within it’s borders.
The blue cities are enforcing the Constitution as sanctuary cities are legal laws of those states. The red states and federal government are violating it.
nickff 5 hours ago [-]
>” The blue cities are enforcing the Constitution as sanctuary cities are legal laws of those states. The red states and federal government are violating it.”
There’s a supremacy clause, and it’s quite clear.
righthand 4 hours ago [-]
The 14th Amendment is federal law that the States must protect the people within their borders through rights, due process, etc. by their own state laws. The Supremacy Clause is irrelevant.
dreghgh 8 hours ago [-]
Can you clarify which part of the constitution is being ignored here?
seydor 16 hours ago [-]
Except that police exists. We willingly relinquish the monopoly of violence to the state that protects us. The world nation stage is anarchic instead, there is no world police, and the strong dominate
matt-attack 9 hours ago [-]
Except you’ve been tricked if you think the ruler of police is to protect you. Despite the little sticker on their car, the Supreme Court has repeatedly decided that the police HAVE NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY to protect you out anyone. That’s just not their role nor responsibility. To think otherwise is to linger in a fantasy world.
etiennebausson 8 hours ago [-]
That is true in the U.S., but there are plenty of country where the cops do protect civilians.
In most case, it is the same countries that give adequate training to their cops, a not-so-surprising correlation.
somenameforme 7 hours ago [-]
I expect that the frequency of violent crime is predictive of police behavior towards crime.
When it's rare, then it's easy and reasonable to take a highly idealistic approach. When it's frequent you have to deal with uncomfortable practical issues like whether an officer should prioritize your survival, or their own. There's a line where heroics turn into suicidality, and that's largely driven by frequency.
maest 8 hours ago [-]
Not all countries are like the US
kube-system 8 hours ago [-]
Police protect through deterrence
IOT_Apprentice 8 hours ago [-]
Through violence & zero accountability.
ExoticPearTree 12 hours ago [-]
Except the police cannot instantly teleport to your location if you are in trouble, hence you have guns to protect yourself until the police arrives.
RugnirViking 9 hours ago [-]
the calculus that I, everyone I know and care about, and everyone that i've ever heard about, relies upon is that you're far less likely to need to police to teleport instantly to you if our divorced angry next door neighbor don't have a gun for his self defence
somenameforme 6 hours ago [-]
That's based on a misleading "fact." Many people claim that most victims of homicide knew their killer. That's true only when the relationship between the two was known. The most common relationship, by far, is "relationship unknown". [1] You are much more likely to be killed by a stranger or somebody who is "relationship unknown" than anybody else.
And furthermore most gun crime is committed by people who do not legally own the firearm being used. [2] I'm loathe to link to that site, but this is an issue that is poorly reported and so it requires exploring a web of data sources, which they actually competently do, on this issue at least.
You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.
>You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.
You should take a refresher on statistics and the difference between correlated and causative
ExoticPearTree 9 hours ago [-]
Maybe not a gun, but an axe or a chainsaw tend to get the job done pretty well. Not as fast, but still.
And why a divorced guy living in his house be an issue with your friends or neighbors?
rapind 8 hours ago [-]
> if our divorced angry next door neighbor
Why is “divorced” relevant. Maybe he should be the one worried about NIMBYs.
RugnirViking 7 hours ago [-]
it's literally a hypothetical person. He studied marketing and made okay money for a while, but he's been out of a job for a bit over a year and a half now too :) His one good friend died a little while ago too.
I made a profile of a person that fits the profile of somebody that might be a little angry at society. Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.
For what its worth, there are plenty of guys I know who are divorced, and it was probably the right decision, and they're great people. Most marriages end that way, in fact. It doesn't mean the "divorced jaded man who lost his social place in the world, struggles to find kindness or peers, and lashes out" is a stock character that will go away. It's a real problem
rapind 2 hours ago [-]
> Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.
Oh god… please fix me.
Anyways it read to me like an obvious generalization. My bad if you weren’t. After all, some of your best friends are “x”.
itishappy 2 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: The divorce rate spikes to about 60% for second marriages, but only about 40% of first marriages end in divorce.
10 hours ago [-]
prmoustache 9 hours ago [-]
On paper that could work if people didn't have children.
Problem is it is impossible to combine:
- responsible storage of firearms
- immediate availability of firearms anywhere at home when faced with hostility
Also most gun violence is domestic so having firearms at home do not solve a problem but creates it.
johnnyanmac 3 hours ago [-]
Like anything else, it's about safety. There's all sorts of dangerous stuff in a household, like a stove. You don't lock them up, you teach kids thst stoves are hot and not to touch them.
That said: lock up your guns. Your mid will probably survive a stove burn.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 8 hours ago [-]
Strong disagree. Education is key, as are not leaving children that are too young to be educated alone where a weapon (not just a gun) is.
Curiosity is the number one problem with kids and guns, and that's because we hide them behind a mystique and don't make them understand. But talk to any redneck kid, and guns aren't a big deal, because they've had the mystique removed through education and familiarity.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 8 hours ago [-]
The state will only protect you under certain circumstances. You're far better off being able to protect yourself, and pray you never have to.
9 hours ago [-]
IOT_Apprentice 8 hours ago [-]
The police aren’t here to protect citizens, courts here have ruled on this. Police are an extension of corporate power & the wealthy. The LA Sheriff’s Department is filled with police gangs.
We’ve seen the footage of the police brutalizing peaceful protestors beating them with clubs, riding over them repeatedly with horses.
The police in this country are woefully undertrained compared to the rest of the industrialized nations.
FireBeyond 4 hours ago [-]
> The police in this country are woefully undertrained compared to the rest of the industrialized nations.
It takes more time and training to be certified as a hairdresser in most parts of the US than it does a cop.
tim-kt 16 hours ago [-]
It's an interesting analogy. I'm opposed to guns in every household because we have the police which is meant to give security to people. There, we allow gun use, but under stricter conditions. The majority agrees that this is right, so the system works.
What is "the police" on the level of countries? There is no majority that agrees that, e. g., the NATO can serve as the police. It feels like on this level, we live in an anarchy with only very few actors who don't really want to live together. So maybe nukes are an option, although I don't like it.
LeonB 9 hours ago [-]
A community where every household does not have guns is safer than one that does: but not for a simple reason like “because we have the police which is meant to give security to people”
A safe community isn’t one where people are held in check by police. People are not roving around thinking “oh I’d break and enter and murder and rape but for the fact a police officer might shoot me.”
People in such a community lack guns but they do have things like a working public health system, decent education, daily encounters with other people that are positive and so on.
The threat of police shootings is not what makes a safe society safe.
Constructive, open and fair trade is the equivalent at an international level. Cooperative and trusting. Not staring down the barrel of each other’s guns.
tim-kt 5 hours ago [-]
> A safe community isn’t one where people are held in check by police. People are not roving around thinking “oh I’d break and enter and murder and rape but for the fact a police officer might shoot me.”
That's also not necessarily the point I'm making. Suppose you are in a society where a small part of people are bad actors, for whatever reason. They will break and enter, murder, and rape. You want to protect the rest of the society against these bad actors. You can now equip everyone with weapons so they may defend themselves. That also enables the bad actors to use said weapons because we don't know who really know who is a bad actor (at least not the ones that didn't commit any crimes yet). Or you give weapons only to a small part of society, where you enforce strict gun laws.
The alternative is to reduce the number of bad actors and this is, in part, fulfilled by the conditions that you are describing. But how do I reduce the number of state leaders that are willing to shoot each other? I guess it's what you are saying, namely constructive, open, and fair trade. But we're not really making progress in that direction it seems.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 8 hours ago [-]
> A community where every household does not have guns is safer than one that does
Except this isn't borne out in the data. Look at deeply conservative places where guns are literally everywhere, and you'll see very low crime rates compared to cities with strict gun control.
And why? Well, as a criminal, I'd be loathe to try something when there's a good chance the victim is armed.
In your perfect community scenario, a single armed criminal would wreak havoc, completely unopposed.
icameron 4 hours ago [-]
Speaking of data: States with shall-issue conceal carry permits see higher rates of gun violence than may-issue states.
I'm citation heavy, but it's also a fact I wouldn't cite as I think/thought it was fairly common knowledge. Here [1] is some random report on it. There's a huge difference in criminality rates between urban and rural, and this applies to most of everywhere in the world.
As someone with roots in a rural area, there’s a lot of crime in such places that is simply never found out (sparse population == fewer opportunities to be caught), is an “open secret” that never gets resolved, is quietly swept under the rug, etc, sometimes even involving local law enforcement. As a result, there’s plenty in the data worth questioning.
johnnyanmac 3 hours ago [-]
Why are we assuming that rural areas have more gun per capita than urban areas? Nothing in that report goes into that topic.
achandlerwhite 8 hours ago [-]
Sounds more like urban vs rural with respect to crime rates than guns or not.
cmrdporcupine 7 hours ago [-]
These hypothetical places have "low" crime rates because they have low population density, not because people are armed.
Why do Canada and Europe have dramatically lower violent crime rates despite having a mostly unarmed population?
t-3 6 hours ago [-]
Canada is in no way "mostly unarmed". ~20% of households have a gun. Some countries in Europe also have high ownership rates as well (like Finland).
cmrdporcupine 5 hours ago [-]
Rifles. For hunting. Not handguns and AR15s.
Grew up rural Alberta with rifles around the house all the time, in plain view. For shooting game. Not a word was ever uttered about "defending ourselves" with guns... From who?
Hell, we left our door unlocked when we left the house unless it was overnight.
Good grief. Nothing is sadder than people valorizing social/cultural breakdown.
"Peace, order, and good government."
t-3 5 hours ago [-]
AR-15 is relatively popular for hunting in the US though?
I don't lock my house or my car habitually, never had a problem, never felt the need to keep a weapon either, but I know plenty of people that live in the city that have been robbed or assaulted and do feel the need to carry though. I can't really blame them for not relying on police.
icameron 4 hours ago [-]
Sportsmen use long guns like 30’6 for big game hunting (elk, deer, antelope) out west. Shots over 100 yards require a large cartridge like that. AR-15 are used in the southern states for wild hogs and varmints, or coyotes. Not exactly trophy hunters. I’m just saying the popularity of the AR-15 is not driven by hunters.
margorczynski 15 hours ago [-]
> I'm opposed to guns in every household because we have the police which is meant to give security to people
You're naive. The police (or whatever you call it) is meant for inward force projection of the state. Your security is not the main concern.
Besides the police works too slowly to truly protect you when SHTF. Sometimes even a minute or two is the difference between you being alive or dead.
erikerikson 12 hours ago [-]
The stability of society and the law based facilitation of peace are absolutely within the mission of police forces and highly facilitative to the prosperity of a society.
I was once involved with a project that returned determination of land ownership from people's physical custody to the courts and the resulting drops in assault and homicide rates (for the entire country) was in the double digits over a period of months.
andrepd 9 hours ago [-]
Wow, super interesting! Where was this if I might ask?
tsimionescu 13 hours ago [-]
> Sometimes even a minute or two is the difference between you being alive or dead.
This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home. I'm countries with virtually no private ownership of guns, it is extraordinarily unlikely to be in life threatening danger in your home.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 8 hours ago [-]
Nobody has knives? Axes? Baseball bats? Where do you live, I wanna come visit.
> This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home
Citation needed, because I highly doubt you're correct.
IOT_Apprentice 8 hours ago [-]
Out of curiosity, where do you live that your perception of life is one of SHTF constantly & unending murder in your city?
fionic 4 hours ago [-]
Hah ez. Syracuse or Rochester NY my boy. Sounds like it must be nice to live in a bubble and retort at your keyboard.
eproxus 15 hours ago [-]
In properly safe countries this is of course not true. But sadly the world stage still seems to be on the development level of ”lawless neighborhood” so there’s some merit to the idea (not that it is necessarily the best way forward though).
thunky 9 hours ago [-]
If someone knows you are heavily armed will they be more or less likely to attack you?
9 hours ago [-]
stickfigure 16 hours ago [-]
North Korea wasn't attacked because they have rocket artillery trained on Seoul. That's why nobody stopped them from developing nukes in the first place. Kim doesn't need nuclear weapons to cause nuclear-scale damage.
secondcoming 9 hours ago [-]
Attacking North Korea would result in millions of refugees pouring into South Korea and China. Nobody wants that
somenameforme 6 hours ago [-]
Hahaha, and what do you think's going to happen to Iran if this stuff is successful? They already have more refugees living there than in any other country in the world except Turkey [1], owing to US adventures in other parts of the world. And they have more than 3x the population of North Korea on top. For that matter they also have more than 3x the population of Syria.
It's a gruesome thought, but I don't imagine very many refugees crossing the (heavily mined) DMZ into South Korea...
ordinary 14 hours ago [-]
Nukes make individual countries safer, but every additional country with nukes makes the world as a whole less safe.
somenameforme 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure that's entirely true. We naturally always try to paint the "enemy" as an unhinged maniac ready to unless destruction on the entire world at a whim, but in reality I don't think this is pretty much ever the case. A population with the industrial and intellectual capability to develop a nuke in the first place is going to have grander ambitions than going out in a blaze of glory. I think even ultra-fundamentalists like the Taliban mostly just want to build up their own little vision of a utopia.
I think a part of the reason North Korea plays crazy is because they have to. If the US didn't think they'd push the big red button, then we'd invade them in a heart-beat. Mutually assured destruction only works when you believe the other guy will push the button. So you need the bomb and then you also need to make sure everybody thinks you're willing to actually use it.
stickfigure 5 hours ago [-]
Sorry for the repetition but I'm just going to repeat this every time it comes up. Maybe some day I'll make it a bot.
North Korea has enough conventional rocket artillery within range of Seoul to level the city. This is how Kim was able to run his nuclear program to completion in the first place. It also hasn't changed.
BeFlatXIII 7 hours ago [-]
Libya giving up its nukes is the precise reason Iran doubled down on its program.
viraptor 17 hours ago [-]
NK isn't attacked, because SK cities are in range for conventional rockets. I'm not sure how much the nuclear capabilities add to that.
rich_sasha 16 hours ago [-]
I think GP is right, sadly. The logical conclusion from Ukraine, Iran and North Korea is, get nukes. UN designations of illegal wars turned out to be BS, the only thing that may work is nukes.
Let's hope NATO doesn't get compromised, else I see 30 new nuclear programs starting soon.
We all hooray (well, some of us) the "good" countries having nukes, to bring peace and stability. But it only takes one funky election to get a crazy person in charge of such "good" nukes. And if you 10x the number of nuclear powers, that's 10x more shots at that.
gghhzzgghhzz 15 hours ago [-]
GP is missing one very relevant example of Libya.
Gaddafi was persuaded by the west to abandon his nuclear programme, and 8 years later he was dead in a ditch.
thimabi 9 hours ago [-]
Considering that his own population was vehemently opposed to his authoritarian regime, I don’t think it’s fair to say Gaddafi’s fate was tied to the end of the nuclear programme. I certainly hope he wouldn’t leash nuclear weapons on his fellow countrymen.
herewulf 7 hours ago [-]
His authoritarian regime was broken by Western air power and the natural consequence was ending up dead in a ditch.
Also, you probably mean "unleash".
thimabi 6 hours ago [-]
Thanks for picking up that minor spelling mistake. Can’t correct it now, unfortunately, but at least the message is understandable.
I do disagree with your premise that Gaddafi’s death was a natural consequence of the Western intervention. Whilst watching the events unfold at the time, I’d say he would be ousted and killed irrespectively of any intervention — either by the populace or by the various factions vying for power.
aaronbrethorst 16 hours ago [-]
Let's hope NATO doesn't get compromised, else I see 30 new nuclear programs starting soon.
I don't intend this as a drive-by zinger, far from it, but I think you're being hopelessly optimistic. Every country with the science and engineering muscle to make it happen will be pursuing a nuclear program. NATO, former Warsaw Pact, some assholes who managed to cobble together a broadly recognized country by virtue of force of will, you name it. They're all going to be seeking to create nuclear weapons.
foooorsyth 9 hours ago [-]
Rockets?
Seoul is in artillery range of the border.
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
> Russia attacked ukraine because they didn't. Iran got attacked because it didn't. North korea isnt attacked because they have. That's the moral of the story.
How do you explain India vs Pakistan?
hnaccount_rng 14 hours ago [-]
They always immediately stop their conflicts once the building opposite of the one with the nuclear command center blows up. So... it seems to work for them
samrus 12 hours ago [-]
with the lack of a war happening between them? neither side invaded or killed 800 of the other's citizens and US/china didnt step in to back their horse with bombs
thats what a "war" looked like when both parties have nukes
ukraine is what a war looks like when both parties dont have nukes
azan_ 6 hours ago [-]
In case of Ukraine one party has nukes, the biggest nuke arsenal in the world actually
donkeybeer 4 hours ago [-]
I think it was meant like not (A has nukes and B has nukes) rather than (not A has nukes) and (not B has nukes). Strange wording, I felt the same way too.
the_af 5 hours ago [-]
That's what they meant: that's what war looks like when both parties don't have nukes. It's usually the defending party which benefits from nukes the most; and both parties having nukes makes every war a very dangerous affair (if it goes unchecked, as opposed to limited like India-Pakistan).
mcphage 9 hours ago [-]
The thing that lasted 4 days and had less than 100 people killed?
seydor 15 hours ago [-]
both have nukes and that acts as a strong deterrent for both of them not to escalate (which they didnt). the countries not having nukes are still in much worse situation
I mean israel gets attacked even though they have nukes, but some rockets are not the same as a regime-changing war
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
> both have nukes and that acts as a strong deterrent for both of them not to escalate (which they didnt).
Your original point was that nukes prevented attacks. India vs Pakistan rejects your hypothesis.
You then proceeded to move the goalpost from "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" to "yeah countries with nukes get attacked, but attacks don't escalate" which is also an absurd argument to make.
It's a particularly silly point to make in light of India Vs Pakistan because it was described as an electoral stunt to save face, which means nuclear nations still attack themselves even for the flimsiest reasons.
seydor 15 hours ago [-]
> is also an absurd argument to make.
It's not. the world is not a binary system to make simplistic black/white arguments. Nukes certainly act as deterrent for escalating a war. yes , attacks will exist , but we are not escalating with russia for a reason. you are being pedantic , but the argument for deterrence still stands strong.
motorest 14 hours ago [-]
> It's not. the world is not a binary system to make simplistic black/white arguments.
I agree, simplistic comments on the line of "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" are silly and don't pass the smell test. Don't you agree?
kmijyiyxfbklao 13 hours ago [-]
Well then you should explain how it doesn't make sense. Focusing on how he didn't mention the case where both countries have nuclear weapons is not convincing.
hajile 10 hours ago [-]
If neither India nor Pakistan had nukes, they would be at war today. Their nukes saved a lot of lives.
cjbgkagh 7 hours ago [-]
So far… trading a more devastating consequence for a decreased likelihood on average will always appear to work until it doesn’t. There may become a time when the use of nukes is tolerated and expected and the only way to win a conflict is to carpet nuke your enemy.
cjbgkagh 4 hours ago [-]
I completely understand MAD and game theory.
What I’m saying precisely is that quite often things will appear to be one way for a long time even if the underlying premise is wrong. E.g. the chicken who thinks the farmer is nice because the farmer feeds, houses, and provides safety until the inevitable untimely end for the chicken.
Similar situations which are assumed to be impossible have risks pushed right up to the edge until it becomes inevitable. Sure Pakistan and India narrowly averted this time but what if they didn’t. Take for example the concept that US housing market couldn’t crash simultaneously across the US, this enabled cheap debt which pushed the market to the edge until one day it went over the edge.
There is additionally the problem of victory disease, it looks like you’re winning right up until you fail.
There is a survivability bias, we wouldn’t be discussing the viability of MAD had it not worked out thus far.
If Iran gets a nuclear weapon they’ll be able to avoid being invaded while being able to constantly needle Israel, to the point the survival of Israel would be at stake. Similar to how Israel is needling Iran now but with proxies. At that point Israel must make a choice, peacefully collapse or escalate and I’m confident they’ll escalate. I don’t think it’s a question of if but a question of when, once the threshold has been crossed the once unthinkable becomes routine.
Additionally the inaction of a strong adversary is often seen incorrectly as sign of weakness, but it is the cornered rats that lashes out. We can cross Russia’s and Chinas red lines all day every day, right up until they think they’re a cornered rat and then we can’t. How confident can we really be that we know exactly where that limit is. Because the bellicose are more often promoted the people marking these assessments are more likely to have an overly optimistic on the location of that limit. It appears to me China and Russia have a wait and see approach to the US which appears to be in terminal decline, and yet again the west is taking that as a sign of weakness.
When you have morons in charge not even MAD can save you.
hajile 7 hours ago [-]
The whole point of MAD is that you can't prevent a second strike from also eliminating your own country. This was all worked out 70-80 years ago.
somenameforme 5 hours ago [-]
As a peer mentioned, nukes not being used has nothing to do with them not being tolerated. It's all about there being no win condition. A single modern nuke can wipe a city out of existence. Even more so when you consider that most are on rockets that split into multiple warheads both to increase destruction and to sidestep any sort of missile defenses. Scale that up and you can wipe entire countries out of existence.
If you enter into a scenario against a nuclear opponent where they go nuclear (which you going nuclear would certainly do) then you may well defeat them, but they're simultaneously also defeat you. This is a big part of the reason that Russia is so paranoid about the US surrounding it with military bases. The only possible way to treat to sidestep this problem is with a massive decapitation strike where you try to nuke your enemy into oblivion before they have any chance to respond with their own nukes. Realistically, it's probably impossible, but but it remains the Achille's Heel of MAD / mutually assured destruction. And drones/internal strike issues are certainly going to be causing some consternation.
Well, there's also missile defense, but I think that's a dead end. We're talking about the offensive goal being to shoot a bullet at the side of a massive barn, and the defensive goal being to shoot down that bullet. It seems impossible to imagine a state of technology between near peers where the latter becomes easier than the former.
the_af 5 hours ago [-]
Others have explained why MAD has nothing to do with "tolerating" the use of nukes, and is instead more about game theory.
But let me put it in familiar worlds from pop culture:
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
(Because Iran doesn't have nukes, it's currently being forced into playing and making losing moves.)
mft_ 14 hours ago [-]
An interesting question is: why wasn’t North Korea attacked to prevent it developing a nuclear weapon?
(Probably the risk to S. Korea, and the risk of pulling China into a war.)
quickthrowman 3 hours ago [-]
The DMZ is 35 miles north of Seoul and there are enough NK artillery pieces aimed at Seoul to level it.
herbst 16 hours ago [-]
Good old "weapons make everything safer" logic. Guess I should get some nukes as well?
otherme123 14 hours ago [-]
It's the prisoners dilemma: best scenario is nobody has nukes. But if your enemy get nukes, you better get them ASAP. A Nash equilibrium is set where everybody should either have nukes or be strongly allied with someone with nukes.
Regarding guns: if you have easy access to weapons, everyone also has access, so the Nash equilibrium is "get a weapon". If weapons circulation is restricted, the Nash equilibrium is "don't waste your money on weapons".
dontTREATonme 7 hours ago [-]
Iran has been attacking Israel for the last 30 years and everyone seems to agree that Israel has nukes… so clearly nukes don’t actually work as a deterrent, unless (again according to many comments here) you attack a genocidal state who’s only goal is to kill everyone but not use the only weapon at your disposal that can actually accomplish that goal.
Iraq also attacked an allegedly nuclear capable Israel without fear of a nuclear reprisal.
t-3 6 hours ago [-]
> Iran has been attacking Israel for the last 30 years
Please give dates, locations, and number of casualties. Iran has made many aggressive statements and funded and armed Palestinian resistance organizations, but actual conflict between Israel and Iran has been mostly clandestine and not officially acknowledged, with a few exceptions where Israel and the US unilaterally attack Iran.
dontTREATonme 5 hours ago [-]
Houthis and Hezbollah are both arms of Iranian regime, acting directly under IRGC direction.
ignoramous 16 hours ago [-]
Probably because the country you live in has one or is under unconditional protection of one.
pms 12 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's sustainable, because it leads to injustice, i.e., countries with nuclear weapons abusing their position. As challenging as it sounds, we need to develop a strong impartial international institution whose the only mission is to maintain peace and prevent large-scale conflict on the planet. This should be the only entity that is approved to have nuclear weapons.
andsoitis 8 hours ago [-]
what do you think could be a first step that moves us in that direction?
pms 3 hours ago [-]
In a reasonable world, the first step would be reforming NATO so that it becomes more neutral and focused on preventing wars rather than countering Russia. I'm saying this as a Pole, so definitely this isn't self-serving, since Poles are second most hated by Russians after Ukraine. This step should, however, happen in parallel with the EU developing its European army, to defend itself from Russia if that's needed, which is another challenging and non-obvious step, but we're closer to this now than we were before Trump.
However, we don't live in a reasonable world, so I suspect the first step will be, as much as I don't want it, World War III.
cm2187 5 hours ago [-]
It's not about "authorized" or "unauthorized". If Switzerland or Brazil acquired nuclear weapons, I don't think anyone would really mind. The problem is with religious extremists sponsoring terrorism getting nukes.
There was a hope that once they acquired nuclear weapons, rogue countries would become responsible, because they didn't need to worry about their own existence. Pakistan has proven this theory wrong, sponsoring terrorism in in its neighbouring countries and abroad while being immune from the consequences.
mvc 4 hours ago [-]
What marks a state out as being religiously extreme? Or sponsoring terror? Stuff like killing politicians of the opposing side? Pardoning insurrectionists on your side? Sponsoring organisations that badger mothers in foreign nations as they attempt to get an abortion?
Aloisius 3 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure it is the fundamentalist theocracy.
johnnyanmac 3 hours ago [-]
>problem is with religious extremists sponsoring terrorism getting nukes.
Yes, tell me more about the US please
drcongo 3 hours ago [-]
Ha, I read that sentence and thought "huh, but the US already has nukes". And Israel for that matter.
skavi 2 hours ago [-]
I don’t see any B2s flying over Israel.
tpm 3 hours ago [-]
> If Switzerland or Brazil acquired nuclear weapons, I don't think anyone would really mind.
I think all current nuclear-weapon states would very much care, because it diminishes their status. Also Switzerland or Brasil would be breaking the Non-Proliferation Treaty which would make even more countries and the UN and IAEA care.
mikeen 2 hours ago [-]
A bunch of countries joined the non-proliferation agreement, including ... Iran. Which makes those nukes illegal in the eye of Iranian own laws.
Israel is not a singer of the treaty.
tptacek 17 hours ago [-]
Correct. That is how sovereign states relate to each other, though.
rich_sasha 16 hours ago [-]
Sort of. I think there was an effort to put a rules-based framework, still skewed towards the "great powers", but a framework nonetheless.
Invasion of Afghanistan only happened after diplomatic efforts to get the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden. Iraq invasion was pushed through UN. Likewise, the Balkan war in 1990s was UN-sanctioned.
This? I mean, never mind the question of nukes, I don't think anyone declared war. Iran is a buffet of pick-your-own-target, in the middle of a negotiation that was supposed to end the nuclear program peacefully. I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it. It's a step back from a world, where at least in theory we were supposed to stay within the frameworks of principle-based laws.
You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it. Maybe. But I'd like to think it set a limit to how far they can bend it. Now? I'm not so sure.
somenameforme 9 hours ago [-]
The head of the UN, declared the invasion of Iraq illegal. [1] The US tried to pass a resolution legalizing the invasion of Iraq through the UN, but it failed. The entire "rules based order" is, I think, part of what caused the world to go to chaos. Because there were never any rules besides might makes right, just as always. But it was used as a pretext for hostile actions with relatively gullible populations.
Democracy doesn't really work when people think the US invaded Vietnam attacked they attacked us, that the US invaded Iraq because they have or are building WMD, that we invaded Libya to "liberate" it, and so on. And as for Iran, here's [2] a montage of Netanyahu claiming Iran will imminently have nuclear weapons, and so they should be invaded. The claims started 30 years ago and generally had a timeline of 1-3 years at most.
If the justifications for wars were more honest, even if that entails completely dropping the facade of morality, it'd have enabled populations within countries to have a better understanding of how the world "really" works, and also to make better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support.
>The entire "rules based order" is, I think, part of what caused the world to go to chaos. Because there were never any rules besides might makes right, just as always.
The UN isn't working very well right now, but it's worked considerably better in the past. In the wake of WW2, I think there was a genuine sentiment that war was really horrible and it should be avoided at all costs. Sadly most of the people who saw WW2 have passed away by this point.
In terms of populations "making better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support" -- I think international law is, if anything, helpful in this regard. Foreign policy is complex, and human nature is such that people are always predisposed to see their own interests as just, or at least cloak their interests in the language of justice. On the other hand, total pacifism is also ideologically unworkable for various reasons. (Even most leftists are against "America First" style isolationism for WW2 or Ukraine.) So international law is valuable in the sense that, at least in principle, it helps you figure out who the bad guy is: Who is breaking international law? That may sound rather academic, but in practice it seems to carry more weight than you might expect.
To state my position another way: I think having some sort of international law is a good idea, even if the current scheme needs to be reworked. A better scheme might be: Have some ritualized, non-lethal way for nations to test strength against each other, e.g. through athletic competitions or wargames, as a binding method of resolving disagreements. This could be game-theoretically stable, if success at the "ritual test of strength" is thought to correlate strongly with real-world war performance. Furthermore, any state which initiates lethal, kinetic confrontation after losing the "ritual test of strength" (sore losers who refuse to abide by the outcome) should become international pariahs subject to secondary sanctions.
frereubu 10 hours ago [-]
> Iraq invation was pushed through the UN.
Well, sort of. They tried, but when the UN gave an answer that the US and UK didn't like, they went ahead anyway.
> You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it.
I'm not quite cynical enough to wholly agree with that, but given enough motivation and power the façade does crack pretty easily.
andrepd 9 hours ago [-]
There was at least a façade. That's the thing: today you don't even need to pretend to care.
edanm 15 hours ago [-]
> I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it.
Well, Iran has been funding armies to the tune of millions (billions?) of dollars to attack Israel, as well as funding multiple terror attacks against Jews and against the US for many years.
So, alternative view - the fact that Iran has been allowed to do this, while the entire time stating quite clearly that they intend to destroy another sovereign country, while at the same time develop most of what they need for nukes - the fact that they've been allowed to do all this is actually proof that countries can do whatever they want and get away with it. And stopping their program is actually a way to show that countries can't just get away with it.
rich_sasha 13 hours ago [-]
But it's not their terror web that is being attacked. Hezbollah and the Houti are fine, today anyway.
I'd love to see a UN resolution calling for the dismantling for this terrorist network. Or if not that, at least some kind of multilateral, or even hell, unilateral declaration on this - "end this or else". But no, it's a western style drive-by shooting. It just so happens the guy who got shot is a baddie.
greedo 9 hours ago [-]
Hezbollah has been completely neutered by Israel.
ElectricalUnion 3 hours ago [-]
Funny thing, they used to say that about Hamaz before 7 October 2023.
austin-cheney 10 hours ago [-]
This is nonsense. Iran spent decades funding proxies to specifically isolate their region economic competitor: Saudi Arabia. Israel just happened to be there and frequently get in the way when not directly intervening.
edanm 9 hours ago [-]
Sorry, what? You're literally [edit: figuratively] flying in the face of... well, just about anyone who has any knowledge or expertise in the middle east.
It also flies in the face of anyone with general knowledge:
Two of Iran's main proxies are Hamas, that has been shooting rockets at Israel for the last 15 years, and launched a major invasion planned (in their mind) to destroy Israel?
And Hezbollah, which fought multiple wars with Israel, also launched hundreds of rockets at Israel since the Gaza war began, and had thousands of rockets aimed at Israel, as well as tens of thousand of ground troops hidden in caves and tunnels on the border of Israel, with plans to launch an invasion into Israel?
This is all on top of the Iranian regime saying over and over again that one of their goals is to destroy Israel?
dreghgh 7 hours ago [-]
I think austin-cheney's point is largely right. Iran has fought a series of proxy wars against Saudi, ever since the Islamic Revolution.
The Iran-Iraq war was the first one, with Iraq funded and supported by the Gulf states.
Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is strategic in this context. The Saudi regime wants rapprochement with Israel and to remain aligned with US interests. But neither of these are remotely popular in the Saudi population. By funding guerrilla warfare against Israel, Iran and to a lesser extent Qatar, keeps the Sauds discredited and unpopular among at home and in other Arab countries. The same applies to Egypt, another regional rival of Iran, whose government have never been off the defensive with the Egyptian people and wider Arab opinion since normalisation with Israel.
Obviously Hamas and Hezbollah themselves are only interested in fighting Israel and not the wider regional conflicts. But Iran itself uses that conflict, quite cynically, for wider geopolitical goals. Its stance is the reason that, from Afghanistan to Turkey to Tunisia, it can always find allies who want to challenge the Gulf states vision for the Middle East. Iran supplies the weapons and the know how, but there's never a shortage of locals to drive the car bombs.
There is an interpretation of Iran's behaviour which sees it as a source of Muslim pride for standing up to imperialism, and suggests in contrast that the Saudi leaders are too decadent, too corrupt, and bring shame by ignoring injustice and exploitation done to Arabs. I would certainly question this, but it's not an unpopular discourse in Saudi and other Arab countries.
If you have never come across the idea of the conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine etc being part of a long game of proxy war and influence between Iran and Saudi, I would question how broad your sources of analysis are.
edanm 7 hours ago [-]
Well, that's fair, and a pretty good analysis. And obviously I view the situation with an Israeli bias.
Still, I think you (or austin-cheney) go way too far in seemingly completely dismissing the idea that the proxies are to fight Israel. Yes, there are a lot of larger strategic implications here, and yes, this is sometimes seen as part of Iran positioning itself as the leader of the Muslim nation that will restore honor to Islam, etc.
But "Israel just happened to be there and frequently get in the way when not directly intervening." doesn't make much sense, given the consistent statements of Iran for the last 40 years, given the fact that they're pouring so much of this funding into Hamas and Hezbollah which, as you say, are only interested in fighting Israel themselves.
(Btw, in some sense, Israel is probably the most powerful regional power in the Middle East.)
In any case, none of this makes my original point "nonsense". The point that it's Iran that's disrupting the rules-based order, not the US, still stands, even if the proxy wars were not "really" to destroy Israel (most evidence to the contrary) and even if it's only funding these proxies which have spread terror and war in the region to try and destabilize Saudi Arabia.
austin-cheney 9 hours ago [-]
I have 5 complete US military CENTCOM deployments (about 5 years living there). What is your expertise?
edanm 9 hours ago [-]
What does that matter? Are you saying you are more of an expert than everyone else?
Would you at least agree that yours is at the very least far from a mainstream opinion? I feel like you at least need to back it up with some evidence given that.
For the record, I have no formal expertise in anything related to this. I do live in Israel, have been living through the bombing campaigns, invasions etc of Iran's proxies for most of my life. The country that just "happened to be in the way".
Except in the case of Hezbollah (first Google result for "why was Hezbollah founded": "Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon."). And except in the case of Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, on the border of Israel. This is the first time I've ever heard Hamas referred to as not mainly having to do with Israel, but with Saudi Arabia.
(In any case, differences in opinion aside, thank you for your service!)
austin-cheney 8 hours ago [-]
It matters because you suggested you asked for it.
So, are you saying the US must go war with Iran now because Hezbollah was founded 43 years ago and does not like Israel?
You are doing a really bad job of presenting anything coherent.
edanm 7 hours ago [-]
> So, are you saying the US must go war with Iran now because Hezbollah was founded 43 years ago and does not like Israel?
No, I didn't say that, and I'm not sure why you're switching to talk about this.
I was specifically refuting this idea from the GP of this thread:
> Sort of. I think there was an effort to put a rules-based framework, still skewed towards the "great powers", but a framework nonetheless.
This and other parts of that comment implied that, up until now, there was a rules-based order, but this attack somehow goes against that.
I was pointing out that this doesn't make much sense to me, because Iran has been breaking that rules-based order for years and getting away with it. Saying that enforcing the order is the problem, and not the attempt to circumvent it, is IMO incorrect.
You're free to correct me on that idea if you disagree, it's certainly a debatable opinion. But the only thing you disagreed with me on (or at least the thing you called out) was that Iran wasn't funding proxies against Israel, it was to contain Saudi Arabia. That, unlike my alternative view of what the war signifies, is something that is at odds with reality.
8 hours ago [-]
rsync 7 hours ago [-]
“You're literally flying in the face of...”
No.
Your parent is figuratively flying in the face of …
I have five figures of karma with which to fight this battle…
edanm 7 hours ago [-]
No, no fight from me - you're totally right! I'm on your side and I usually don't make that mistake :)
runlaszlorun 9 hours ago [-]
No middle east expert but wouldn't you call Turkey a competitor?
austin-cheney 9 hours ago [-]
Iran does not view Turkey as their primary regional competitor. You could argue that Turkey is not an oil economy and is closer to Europe. There is also an ethic and religious factor. Iran is majority Persian and Shia while Saudi Arabia is majority Arab and Sunni.
t-3 1 hours ago [-]
Turkey and Iran also have some common interests WRT to Kurds and other minority groups, though they clash in other areas (like Syria).
herewulf 7 hours ago [-]
FWIW, Turkey is majority Turkic and Sunni. The Middle East is a complex place.
samjones33 8 hours ago [-]
Iran has spent 100x more (1000x) preparing for and battling Israel than it has Saudi. You are clearly not counting Iranian-funded rockets in the region or where they point. (Hezbollah had 15,000 of em... zero pointed at Saudi... ditto arms in Syria... ditto arms in Gaza...)
austin-cheney 8 hours ago [-]
Saudi Arabia does not threaten to fire rockets at Iran on a daily basis or encourage others to do so. That is a striking distinction that cannot be ignored. And also Israel has nuclear weapons.
Hezbollah is not Iran. Israel has gone to war with Hezbollah in the past completely without military intervention from Iran.
belorn 11 hours ago [-]
This strongly reminds me how naval warfare had period where participants was supposed to act according to certain fair rules. First they would fly the right color, then they would request the attacked ship to surrender, then they would attack if the other party declined surrender, and then they would pick up any surviving sailors that ended up in the water. World war 2 (and to a degree, world war 1) kind of ruined all that.
aiisjustanif 4 hours ago [-]
Treaties between nations, Iran signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and would be in violation. [1]
In general many sanctions around nukes are based on many many treaties and the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs. [2]
>> A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them.
you're both correct.
Also note the Iranian monarchy signed the NPT in 1970, while the Iranian Revolution was in 1979. When your national origin story is built on the illegitimacy of the previous government, why would you consider yourself to be constrained by the actions of your illegitimate parents?
Not saying the current Iranian government is good, just acknowledging that legitimacy is determined by the victors, and the current regime has been victorious over the previous, just as last night's B2's were victorious against the air defenses. Might makes right, morality is increasingly a propaganda story, and history really is written by the victors.
reissbaker 17 hours ago [-]
Israel isn't even close to the most recent country that got nukes (and they never signed the non-proliferation treaty) so I'm not sure why you have beef with them in particular.
rich_sasha 17 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying I have beef with it. I would be happier with a world where fewer countries, including Iran and Israel, have nukes. I'm saying legality of nukes seems 100% derived from a calculus of power, not first principles - that includes US, UK, Russia, China, everyone.
If a mafia boss defines anything he gets away with as legal, that's not aligned with what we commonly think of as legal justice and thus a pointless distinction.
SllX 16 hours ago [-]
There is no justice nor glory to be had in nuclear weapons, but they exist, and need to be contained to as few entities that can use them as possible. Like seriously, the ideal number of nuclear warheads in the world is 0, but that is not the world we were born into.
So I've made peace with mafia boss power politics keeping the number of countries with nuclear weapons on the low end of the spectrum, and for that matter I'd support a much more aggressive approach to that end than we have seen these last 30 years.
pms 12 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's sustainable, because it leads to injustice, i.e., countries with nuclear weapons abusing their power, which in the end encourages all countries to get nuclear weapons to protect their own safety and interests.
As challenging as it sounds, we need to develop a strong impartial international institution whose the only mission would be maintaining peace and preventing wars on the planet. This should be the only entity that's approved to have nuclear weapons.
SllX 4 hours ago [-]
> As challenging as it sounds, we need to develop a strong impartial international institution whose the only mission would be maintaining peace and preventing wars on the planet.
The scenario you concocted here is Disneyland. It’s not just challenging, it’s just an oppressive version of the UN, but it won’t be impartial because it will be the most powerful organization on the planet and a target for every extremist and ideologue that seeks to acquire power. You haven’t changed the game, you’ve temporarily changed the battlefield.
pms 3 hours ago [-]
You can ridicule this idea, but we're already having the US (partly through NATO) taking the role of a global sherif, except without aiming for neutrality, accountability, nor justice, so we end up living in a geopolitical world in which "might makes right". If we continue like this, we will have another World War, but learning by mistakes is sometimes the only realistic way forward.
SllX 2 hours ago [-]
What you are proposing is not a change, it's still might makes right. You're just changing the letterhead.
Kamq 4 hours ago [-]
> This should be the only entity that's approved to have nuclear weapons.
This speaks like someone who has never been outside of a heavily bureaucratized regime. People don't get "approval" for things, they just do them.
justin66 6 hours ago [-]
> So I've made peace with mafia boss power politics keeping the number of countries with nuclear weapons on the low end of the spectrum, and for that matter I'd support a much more aggressive approach to that end than we have seen these last 30 years.
The contradiction is that by relying on militarism instead of diplomacy we keep demonstrating that countries are safer from aggression once they have the bomb. You think the situation you’ve described provides a negative incentive for nuclear development, but it does not.
SllX 4 hours ago [-]
Or more realistically: both war and diplomacy. I don’t know why it’s being framed as one or the other, but the fact is when diplomacy fails, and it is a must-achieve goal, war is an option.
justin66 2 hours ago [-]
With regard to the "mafia boss power politics" you were talking about, the mafia boss keeps doing things like withdrawing from the JCPOA (back then) and abandoning negotiations to follow Israel's lead in war (today). Maybe approaching things at the mafia boss level isn't the way to go.
SllX 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah what I was talking about doesn't exclude diplomacy, but at one point or another you've got to be clear that under no circumstances will the development of nukes by $country be tolerated either if you're going to keep the number of nuclear powers tamped down.
Or maybe that is the wrong approach, but the policy we've had that let North Korea develop nukes and Iran at least get very close also isn't working.
justin66 59 minutes ago [-]
North Korea is the place where foreign policy hawks go to die. It's embarrassing to watch. Every now and then over the past seven decades we have had politicians who think they're clever because their trusted advisors told them "we'll find a new way to threaten them," "let's offer them something," "you're really smart, you've got this, and nobody has noticed that you're orange" and so on, and they issue some tough talk about North Korea. It's hard to describe how inadequate their diplomacy has always been to the task. Their diplomacy is like the Visigoths trying to pull down the hated remnants of the Roman Empire, like bridges and aqueducts and so on, using oxen and ropes and inevitably failing. Something like that. North Korea is a tough problem.
Iran is more straightforward. I don't know why we've been so reluctant to make real diplomatic effort, especially after so many of Iran's proxies were significantly weakened in the last year or two, and Iran's sway was at a minimum. There seems to be an unwritten rule that once we've categorized a country as an enemy we're obligated to deal with them in the dumbest ways imaginable.
tchalla 9 hours ago [-]
> There is no justice nor glory to be had in nuclear weapons, but they exist, and need to be contained to as few entities that can use them as possible.
Agreed. Let's start with US and Russia first.
mdhb 15 hours ago [-]
The irony of this entire situation is that it actually all but guarantees large scale nuclear proliferation.
It’s not that people were just too dumb or too scared to do something about it.
reissbaker 13 hours ago [-]
I think Russia invading Ukraine, after signing a treaty to respect their borders if Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons, let this particular cat out of the bag a long time ago.
devcpp 15 hours ago [-]
Everyone will agree with that. It's pretty obvious NK got nukes because they had an ally strong enough to shield them. "Unauthorized" referred to precisely the lack of credible support from a strong ally.
octo888 17 hours ago [-]
Isr ael is literally involved with bombing Iran right now and this is a post about it. How could you expect them not to be mentioned?
snapetom 16 hours ago [-]
You 100% know why.
hearsathought 20 hours ago [-]
> I think Netanyahu belongs in prison
Didn't Netanyahu perjure himself to congress about iraq's wmds two decades? Isn't that grounds for arrest? It's amazing how our media never mentions that netanyahu is a habitual liar when they push netanyahu's iran's wmds spiel.
At this point our media companies are israel's PR department. Fox news should be banned like RT for being a foreign mouthpiece.
NekkoDroid 18 hours ago [-]
> Fox news should be banned like RT for being a foreign mouthpiece.
You forget that it is also US state media. Republicans would be banning their own version of RT.
qeternity 5 hours ago [-]
People really need to stop glossing over the very real differences between state controlled media, and media that you think is aligned with a certain political group.
You can believe Fox News is the worst entity in human history, but Fox News is not RT.
zorobo 5 hours ago [-]
Fox News is not a problem as long as there are other voices in the media.
Actually the "other voices" as more numerous.
The GP has a problem with plurality of opinions and media.
benrutter 17 hours ago [-]
> Isn't that grounds for arrest?
Maybe, but worth saying the ICC have issued a warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes. The reason he hasn't been arrested is:
- The ICC is just a court, not a police department. Only countries have those, and while Netanyahu is in Israel, his own police probably won't arrest him.
- Authoritarian governments like Trump, Orban, Putin are actively undermining the ICC, which makes enforcement even less likely.
birn559 17 hours ago [-]
I believe no US administration ever acknowledged the ICC. By the way, the German chancellor just said he wouldn't arrest Netanyahu if he came to Germany.
If there is a nation that cannot be expected to act with equanimity in regards to Israel, that's Germany. Nothing to do with the legitimacy of the ICC, that Germany has always recognised.
mongol 14 hours ago [-]
Is this something the German chancellor can say? In countries with an independent judiciary, this is a matter for prosecutors, police and courts.
mr_toad 6 hours ago [-]
In most countries state prosecutors are directly controlled by the executive. The US is a bit of an anomaly in having semi-independent elected prosecutors. The government wouldn’t normally get directly involved - the optics are terrible - but in high profile political cases they will.
jahewson 17 hours ago [-]
Why should anybody care what some upstarts with zero moral authority at the ICC think? Nobody voted for them.
normie3000 16 hours ago [-]
> Nobody voted for them.
How is that relevant? Is an elected judiciary demonstrably more objective at interpreting law?
goatlover 16 hours ago [-]
Judges aren't representatives, they exist to interpret the law.
14 hours ago [-]
browningstreet 8 hours ago [-]
FWIW Jon Stewart covered it quite well
In Mondays episodes with clips. Lots of clips. But I completely agree with respect to mainstream news outlets. .
yencabulator 19 hours ago [-]
Trump sanctioned ICC judges after ICC issued a warrant for Netanyahu. It's a lot more than just PR.
jama211 3 hours ago [-]
I would’ve thought all the war crimes and genociding would’ve been enough but hey here we are…
Beefin 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
idiotsecant 17 hours ago [-]
If Israel wasn't there, there would be terrorists on my doorstep? That's your actual, honest claim here?
400thecat 16 hours ago [-]
The Ayatollah regime wants to export their version of Islam to the whole world, by any means necessary, including terrorism.
idiotsecant 16 hours ago [-]
We're going to start dropping some freedom munitions on every nation that wants to export a looneytunes religious viewpoint? Physician, heal thyself...
Seriously, though. There are thousands of tin-pot dictators who would love to remake the world in their image. None of them have the ability to do so, including Iran. What makes this one special? Other than it being a very convenient target in a news cycle with some very inconvenient stories?
Beefin 9 hours ago [-]
iranian proxies have contributed to the deaths of milllions of people including americans. syria, sudan, kuwait, libya, yemen, you think it's just looney toons you're shielded by the safety of your office chair.
then again if your username is accurate, there's no point
Beefin 9 hours ago [-]
do you not understand military intelligence?
snapetom 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
fakedang 17 hours ago [-]
Be the cause of the terrorism, then talk of how you're the "tip of the spear" in preventing terrorism. You'd need to be special to be that kind of deluded.
With these strikes, it seems more like Israel has ample intelligence on the US government than it has on the Middle East, since even DNI concurred that there was no proof of WMDs.
ImJamal 19 hours ago [-]
I don't know what Netanyahu said so he may have perjured himself, but Iraq technically had WMD. They weren't nukes, but the chemical variety and most of them weren't stored properly.
idiotsecant 17 hours ago [-]
Sure glad we spent a generation of lives and treasure, and maybe the golden years of the American hegemony on that boondoggle to take care of a few crappy chemical weapons in some dusty sand pit of a country.
samrus 12 hours ago [-]
youre still falling for it? these guys knew exactly what they were doing when they said WMDs; they meant nukes and to exploit post 9/11 fears. then they moved the goalposts after their lie was discovered to make bombs "WMDs"
matt-attack 9 hours ago [-]
What was the real motivation?
ImJamal 6 hours ago [-]
I know they meant nukes. Both Bush and Netanyahu explicitly said nukes. I am strictly talking about potential perjury. If in official testimonies they only said WMD then they did not commit perjury.
rsingel 17 hours ago [-]
They had jack. Zero. Nada.
It was ginned up BS that led to the worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years, directly creating ISIS, deaths of 500k Iraqis and kicking off the migrant crisis.
stickfigure 17 hours ago [-]
The Kurds would beg to differ.
jeromegv 16 hours ago [-]
The same Kurds the US government fucked over in Syria?
ImJamal 16 hours ago [-]
Why does it matter if the US screwed them?
ImJamal 16 hours ago [-]
> They had jack. Zero. Nada.
> It was ginned up BS
This is just not true. You can view the documents on wikileaks and other organizations.
> that led to the worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years, directly creating ISIS, deaths of 500k Iraqis and kicking off the migrant crisis.
Perhaps, but completely irrelevant to whether or not they had WMD.
I don't get why people who are on the right side of this refuse to admit this.
Some of the chemicals qualified as WMD. Almost none of them were properly stored and weren't usable, but a little bit were usable.
Also, I'm not making the claim they were trying to make new ones, just that they had some.
rsingel 5 hours ago [-]
The U.S. didn't launch a war over whether there were some leftovers from the war vs Iran.
It was about ongoing programs, including a whole bunch of horse droppings about yellowcake uranium enrichment.
Pedantically saying but there were some old shells of gas misses the entire point.
The US ginned up a war on false pretenses, leading to millions dying.
Your um actually on some trivia ain't helpful or interesting
ImJamal 5 hours ago [-]
You are going off topic. I was only addressing the false claim that they did not have WMDs. They very much did. I am not making any statements on if we should have gotten involved, if there were false pretenses or anything like that.
I don't get why people who are so opposed to the war are the ones who can't admit they actually did have WMD. Making these false claims just makes it look like we, who were opposed to the war, are the liars.
motorest 17 hours ago [-]
I don't know who is downvoting PP but here's Wikipedia's article on Iraq WMDs.
Perhaps because the article you linked says things like:
> U.S.-led inspections later found that Iraq had ceased active WMD production and stockpiling.
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
> Perhaps because the article you linked says things like:
The article says an awful lot more, such as pointing out the fact that Saddam's regime not only ran WMD development programmes for decades but also had a long and verified track record of using them in military engagements and even against civilians.
The article also points out the fact that once Saddam's regime was defeated in it's botched attempt at invading and annexing Kuwait, it rejected and outright antagonized the UN's programme that foresaw terminating Saddam's WMD programmes.
Trying to spin the issue as a simplistic "they had no WMDs" is ignorant to the point of being nearly disingenuous. You need to ignore everything and the whole history to make such a simplistic and superficial observation.
dreghgh 15 hours ago [-]
The problem with this argument is that the case for war with Iraq was repeatedly made as "Iraq has WMDs that they are willing and ready to use".
motorest 14 hours ago [-]
> The problem with this argument is that the case for war with Iraq was repeatedly made as "Iraq has WMDs that they are willing and ready to use".
It's not s problem at all. It's actually the whole point.
Following Saddam's botched invasion of Kuwait, the regime was ordered to destroy it's WMD stockpile. The UN was mandated to foresee Saddam's WMD programmes were destroyed. Saddam spent the following years outright preventing the UN to do any form of verification, and went to the extent of outright antagonizing them.
So you reach a point where a totalitarian regime with a long and proven track record of developing and using WMDs refuses to show it got rid of it's WMDs. How can you tell if they still have it if they actively prevent the UN from checking?
You instead receive intel that suggests Saddam is indeed not only stockpiling WMDs but also actively developing them.
Do you think it's unreasonable to enforce the decision?
It's tempting to look back and take the simplistic and ignorant path of saying "there were no WMDs". This however denies all facts and state of affairs. In fact, the whole WMD talk is a red herring.
dreghgh 14 hours ago [-]
"Yes, we did lie. But in hindsight, our lie did not affect anyone's decision making. The truthful part by itself was enough to convince everyone who was convinced."
eastbound 17 hours ago [-]
Chemicals are usually less efficient than normal bombs. They’re too local. You can do the same with explosives. “Iraq had explosives.”
motorest 17 hours ago [-]
If you read up on Iraq's history of WMDs, the relevance of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons was that Saddam's regime had already a long history of developing and using these types of weapons both against neighbors and its own civilians. When Saddam decided to invade and annex Kuwait, half the world united to act, drive him out, and eliminate Iraq's WMD programmes. After the first gulf war, the UN was in charge of verifying that Saddam's regime destroyed it's existing stockpile and WMD programmes, but Saddam not only actively prevented the UN from doing any form of verificarion but also outright antagonized the UN.
It was with this backdrop that the "Iraq has WMDs" campaign managed to get traction. If you learn history and pay attention to the events, you'll quickly understand that Saddam's antagonism and mockery of the whole UN institution, specially when they self-isolated, was an easy sell even with weak evidence.
Making this out to be a simple matter exclusively and bounded to the existence of WMDs is naive and outright ignorant.
14 hours ago [-]
D-Coder 18 hours ago [-]
"Perjure"? Was he testifying under oath?
mynameisash 17 hours ago [-]
"Providing a false statement to Congress is a crime, regardless of whether you are under oath."[0]
The US has no business attempting to enforce domestic law on foreign leaders present in the country under diplomatic immunity.
usr1106 16 hours ago [-]
If lying were a crime, Trump would never be released from jail again.
tw04 17 hours ago [-]
All it did was prove to Iran they need nuclear weapons. There’s one thing every country knows and it’s that the only way you don’t become the target of Russia, the US, or Israel is to maintain a nuclear arsenal.
We couldn’t stop North Korea with threats of violence but we did manage to stop Iran for almost 50 years through diplomacy. That’s all pissed down the drain now.
floatrock 7 hours ago [-]
This.
Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia after the collapse of the USSR with a treaty-promise that Russia will never be an aggressor.
Iran has now been bombed into regime change for trying to even get to that point.
If there's one thing every 2-bit aspiring dictator now knows, it's the only way to protect yourself is to get nukes.
This wasn't a non-proliferation enforcement action, this was the nail in the coffin of all future non-proliferation efforts.
georgeecollins 6 hours ago [-]
Also: Khadafy. We asked him to not pursue nukes (and for whatever reason he didn't). When there was unrest in his country the European powers (first) and the US (later) struck him. They would have never done that if he had a nuke.
Now we have regime change and Libya is a paradise. /s
One of the problems with all of this is we may hate the government, but in getting rid of it we don't get anything better.
rabidonrails 5 hours ago [-]
Iran has killed, threatened, or killed-through-proxy many Americans in the last 50 years. They have created and sown instability throughout the region threatening Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia just to name a few. Notice that none of their regional neighbors have come to their defense.
They have consistently and openly threatened US leaders.
There was no diplomacy here.
FireBeyond 4 hours ago [-]
What a bunch of assholes, you're right, there's no talking to them. I wonder why they're so angry at us?
"The last 50 years", you say? Oh, so right around the time when the US and Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister to install a religious nutcase, because that nutcase would agree to sell them oil at a better price?
No, can't imagine that causing any bitterness.
We reaped what we sowed with Iran.
stickfigure 6 hours ago [-]
This needs to be repeated over and over every time it comes up:
North Korea is poised to level Seoul with conventional rocket artillery. A military solution has never been an option. Threats of violence in Korea are transparent.
jama211 3 hours ago [-]
There are many countries who easily avoid becoming the target of Russia, the US, or Israel without maintaining a nuclear arsenal…
GuardianCaveman 17 hours ago [-]
Oh we stopped them? They’ve steadily advanced towards being a nuclear state regardless of all the diplomacy deployed. How many countries don’t have nukes that aren’t being invaded. Canada, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica etc. they don’t have nukes and I don’t think they’re about to be invaded because they’ve joined the international community and are not sponsoring hezbollah or houthis etc.
tw04 10 hours ago [-]
>Oh we stopped them? They’ve steadily advanced towards being a nuclear state regardless of all the diplomacy deployed.
Yes, we stopped them. How many nuclear weapons does Iran possess today? 0? Despite having a vast, VAST head start on North Korea - like decades worth of experience and capabilities. The ONLY reason they don't have one today is the diplomacy that convinced them to not move forward faster.
>How many countries don’t have nukes that aren’t being invaded. Canada, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica etc.
I think my favorite part is when the first country on your list is one who has been threatened repeatedly by the current US administration.
What exactly do you think Canada is going to do should Trump decide to follow-through on his threats of making them the 51st state? Make some strongly worded notices of condemnation with the UN while Ottawa is being razed?
Costa Rica has nothing anybody wants. If the US tomorrow declared they are no longer protecting Japan, they would likley find themselves invaded by Japan before the end of the year. The only reason Italy is safe is because they're part of the EU, and the EU has... you guessed it... access to nuclear weapons.
sir0010010 6 hours ago [-]
> The ONLY reason they don't have one today is the diplomacy that convinced them to not move forward faster.
Yet, if they had moved faster, force would've been used to stop them earlier.
tw04 2 hours ago [-]
Israel has been using force for multiple decades to no avail, it ultimately was delayed by diplomacy.
If force alone could stop a nuclear program, why does North Korea have bombs? Many nations could have attacked them without any concerns of recourse for decades.
jama211 3 hours ago [-]
Ok the assumptions in this thread are now officially out of hand
Hikikomori 13 hours ago [-]
Maybe the US and Europeans should stop meddling in the middle east if they don't want to be their enemies
etiennebausson 8 hours ago [-]
Is the EU meddling? I though it was U.S. and Israël that were the driving force of those crusades.
u8080 5 hours ago [-]
Iraqi invesion was aminly driven by US, UK and Poland, but some countries was involed too(i.e. Ukraine for some reason)
Hikikomori 6 hours ago [-]
Mostly UK, less so in recent years though.
mrtksn 19 hours ago [-]
Let’s hope that the destruction of facilities comes with the regime change in Iran. otherwise it may have just given a brief pause and further escalation.
If the regime survives, now Iranian people have a very good reasons to ignore its shortcomings and tyranny and Do a proper sacrifice. It’s a natural resources rich nation of 90 million people. If they want to get serious, they can get serious.
swat535 3 hours ago [-]
As an Iranian, I want it clear: the Islamic Republic has destroyed Iran. For 46 years, they held our country hostage, suppressing us, dictating what we can wear, say, or believe, while chanting death to the West and chasing nuclear power. They’ve brutalized peaceful protesters, raped, imprisoned, and killed our people. Now, their so-called enemies have walked right in, understandably. A regime that has no mercy for us citizens can't be trusted with nuclear power. This is why we’re here: a paper lion with no real strength beyond the people it oppresses.
More to it, I've had personal experience with this brutal regime, they arrested my old cousin during the Mahsa Protests(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests), she was taken to the Evin prison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison) and was tortured for 6 months. We had no news from her. When she was finally released, she was so skinny that you could see her rib bones. We managed to bring her to Canada and it took her over a year of medical care until she began to recover. She was only 20.
No one hates this regime more than Iranians.
With all that out of the way, Iranians have no choice now but the defend their homes against hostile forces. They will not simply sit back and watch Israel and United States bomb their land to oblivion and then demand unconditional surrender.
This attack will inflict more pain on Iranians and only serves to grow the regime stronger.
We wanted a regime change, but not at the hands of Israel and US.
meekaaku 2 hours ago [-]
Thank you. Its refreshing to here perspective from an Iranian.
Honest question, do Iranians want foreign help for regime change? If so, what would be the nature of this help?
smcl 15 hours ago [-]
Well the mass destruction and death in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya came with regime change but what followed was more death and chaos that none have fully recovered from. I'm sorry but that "we'll just bomb the country and hope that helps" attitude is utterly stupid and has been repeatedly proven to be deeply ineffective
riffraff 17 hours ago [-]
Can you think of a regime that was bombed by foreigners and quickly fell?
I cannot. Ground occupation, yes. But afaict bombing just reinforces the regime.
YZF 17 hours ago [-]
I don't think we have a historical precedence to what is happening here. The closest would be Israel's attack on Hezbollah which literally collapsed and led to the collapse of the Syrian regime as well.
The Iranian regime is very centralized and with Israel and the USA having air superiority and having penetrated it completely from an intelligence perspective (see Israel's perfect knowledge of the whereabouts of the previous chief of staff and the newly appointed chief of staff) it's going to be very hard for it to survive if a decision is made to remove it. There are a handful of key people that once gone there is not going to be any continuity.
The current regime is allowed to continue because of fear of chaos if it is removed, not because there isn't a capability to remove it.
jeromegv 16 hours ago [-]
Syria regime changed was made by troops on the ground.
Again, no bombing campaigns led to a change of regime. This theory is proven again and again
YZF 4 hours ago [-]
The troops on the ground were only able to act because the regime has been weakened. But yes, someone in Iran would need to somehow actively do something.
birn559 17 hours ago [-]
Sound like it's very realistic that Israel will target the regime itself soon. I don't think the US will actively support it, though.
arandomusername 8 hours ago [-]
Israel can't execute regime change by themselves, so US will definitely get involved.
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
people didnt think the US would support this bombing. the "nothing ever happens" bet isnt looking good right now
mrtksn 15 hours ago [-]
First footage from the area doesn't appear to show any extended damage, so maybe it was all a show.
Regardless, a sovereign country was bombed tonight just because they can. This, IMHO, can have very bad outcomes for the peace worldwide since it means that anybody who can bomb someone can just go ahead and do it. No more international order.
What's next then? Bomb Brussels because EU doesn't buy chicken from USA? This stuff isn't OK.
The regime change in Iran can be a silver lining if it changes with something more cooperative. But yes, I agree that this is unlikely.
breppp 7 hours ago [-]
to be fair what you see is 6 bombs points of entry, you don't know what happened to the underground compound.
From what I gathered from OSINT types, they have breached the ventilation shafts above the centrifuge halls
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
> Regardless, a sovereign country was bombed tonight just because they can.
The dictatorial nature of Trump's order to attack a nation is far more concerning. Supposedly the US requires an act of Congress to authorize this sort of operation. Sidestepping congress underlines US's descent into totalitarianism and one of the very first acts crystalizing a dictatorship.
adastra22 14 hours ago [-]
An act of Congress is not required for the first 60 days.
gehwartzen 6 hours ago [-]
The way the world works these days m 60 Days is enough for the president to unilaterally get us into war with literally every country on the planet.
This president has clearly exposed the unarticulated parts of out laws which is supposed to make them work; The hope that the president will essentially act and interpret them in “good faith”
8note 5 hours ago [-]
Congress and the US in general has had plenty of time to adjust the powers of the president as US naval, air, and communications capabilities have increased.
not doing so is approval of the change in the president's power to initiate and wage war unilaterally without congressional involvement
nivertech 5 hours ago [-]
> a sovereign country was bombed tonight
IRGC isn’t a sovereign country, it’s a designated terrorist organization
You forgot that IRGC already directly attacked Israel twice in 2024 [1,2], and that’s not including countless proxy attacks and terrorist acts, culminating in October 7th massacres & atrocities
You got it wrong: IRGC attacked and Israel retaliated
US is just helped a little bit their ally
> This stuff isn't OK.
UN, ICC, ICG, etc. all became a $hit show, they don’t work. For 40 years IRGC threatened with Genocide of Jews, and they did nothing. Now when Jews retaliated: * This stuff isn't OK.* ;)
huh? iran definitely has a sovereign government. just because you dont like it doesnt make it not true.
nivertech 5 hours ago [-]
Substance over form
or
De facto vs de jure
Pedantic rule-based systems are easy to circumvent with loopholes and lacunas. That’s why we should look at the substance and not merely a [legal] form
Examples:
- form: a cryptocurrency, but substance: an unregistered security
- “medical alcohol” during dry laws / Prohibition
- “medical marijuana” & patients vs drug users
- etc.
—-
Was Third Reich[1] a “sovereign government” or a front for The National Socialist German Workers' Party?
Was USSR a “sovereign government” or a front for a Communist Party?
Is Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) a “sovereign government” or merely a front for IRGC[2]?
And wasn’t Iran/Persia already a “sovereign government” before IRGC staged a coup d'état (aka “revolution”)?
—-
> "De facto" and "de jure" are Latin terms used to distinguish between what exists in reality and what is legally recognized. "De facto" refers to something that exists in practice or reality, even if not officially established or legally recognized. "De jure" refers to something that is legally recognized or officially established
So China isn't a sovereign government because it's a front for CPP and can be bombed at will...?
nivertech 1 hours ago [-]
If any entity threatens u: u have 3 options: fight back, surrender, or self-destruct
In the first case, u have 2 more options: strike pre-emptively, or wait for them to strike & then retaliate
It doesn't matter what the entity is, it only matters whether they are enemy or not
——
> So China is not a sovereign state because it is a front for the CPP and can be bombed at will...?
I don't see the logical connection here. I never wrote that countries controlled by terrorist or authoritarian entities should be bombed at will. I wrote that some countries are highjacked by them, & if they attack or declare their intention to attack u, u may as well do it first
necklesspen 17 hours ago [-]
It didn't literally cause a regime change but the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was essentially the last nail in the coffin for the Milosevic regime.
The key element is where the will of the people points - Milosevic was already unpopular and the bombing further united the people against him.
The few Iranians I know are against the regime, but I don't know how the wider picture looks.
cultofmetatron 5 hours ago [-]
> The few Iranians I know are against the regime, but I don't know how the wider picture looks.
my experience with Iranians I know are the same. the regime is not partitularly liked by the Iranians but they are no doubt united behind him now because (and for good reason) they likely believe whoever the israelis would appoint as the leader of Iran would be categorically worse.
verzali 11 hours ago [-]
I find it hard to believe foreign intervention can do anything other than rally support.
A lot of Americans deeply oppose Trump, but how many of them would support a Chinese invasion with the express objective of overthrowing him and installing a new regime? I suspect very few, and instead you'd probably get a backlash of support for Trump.
fakedang 17 hours ago [-]
According to my Iranian friends (even the most hardline Ayatollah haters), most Iranians hate the regime, but they'll rally behind them if boots land on the ground.
Many of them still look at the Iran-Iraq war with a shade of Iranian patriotism (not sure there's a word to capture that actual feeling of sad memories of losing family members, coupled with a patriotic sense of duty).
The younger generation, not so much, since they didn't have to live through that hell.
yibg 1 hours ago [-]
Ground occupation also don't typically leads to a healthy regime change. Yes the regime can be changed quickly, but not always in the way we want.
400thecat 16 hours ago [-]
Argentinian Junta fell after they lost the Falkland war in 1982
herewulf 7 hours ago [-]
That was an external war initiated through a grave miscalculation by the junta. Apples and oranges.
mupuff1234 7 hours ago [-]
> through a grave miscalculation by the junta.
Sounds pretty similar to the current situation to me.
coffeebeqn 17 hours ago [-]
Not necessarily but this is also not the end of the campaign. If Israel and US take out their ultimate bargaining chip and have air supremacy then the room to maneuver for the ayatollah is quite small. What happens next inside Iran is anyone’s guess. There have been multiple waves of very large protests in the past five years. What’s stopping mossad from delivering rifles to them from Syria or an airdrop at this point of escalation
aksss 16 hours ago [-]
Japan
herewulf 7 hours ago [-]
Japan was on the verge of being invaded by both the United States and the Soviet Union. The writing was on the wall and the choice to surrender very likely turned out better for Japan, both territorially and in the key priority of persevering the Imperial Dynasty.
adastra22 14 hours ago [-]
Okinawa and all those pacific island, not to mention China and south east Asia.
scq 13 hours ago [-]
Yugoslavia.
reaperducer 3 hours ago [-]
Can you think of a regime that was bombed by foreigners and quickly fell?
Japan.
WaxProlix 19 hours ago [-]
Even if the regime doesn't survive, what's our track record in Iranian regime change like? What are the chances people there swallow their pride and roll over? If anything, Khomeini is probably a moderate compared to a lot of what we could end up with after 'regime change' (lol)
jvm___ 18 hours ago [-]
What are the chances that the peaceful, think it through, be reasonable crowd is ready to organize the next regime. Or maybe the hotheads with guns are ready to shoot first aim later.
Perhaps forcing regime changes on other countries shouldn't be a quick decision.
devcpp 18 hours ago [-]
Saying "Khomeini" on current day Iran casts a large doubt on how much you know on the topic.
levanten 15 hours ago [-]
He is asking a valid question. Experts on the issue also warn that there is no guarantee that what replaces the current regime would be any more amenable.
apparent 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, but that name refers to a leader from decades ago. There is a similar-named leader today, but people who conflate the two tend not to be well-informed on the topic.
senderista 5 hours ago [-]
See also: Russia
mrtksn 18 hours ago [-]
I guess it’s all about how it’s handled afterwards. Germany and Japan have become huge US allies after some proper bombings.
Just recently Trump tried to troll the Germany’s leader for it and only got a “Thank you for defeating us”.
The truth is that Iran’s regime is indeed a very shitty one and a lot of people have grievances with it but the problem is, this is about Israel and they are not any better and didn’t stand at a higher moral ground with their illegal occupation and actions that many consider genocidal.
7952 13 hours ago [-]
I think the post war political movement in America that produced the Martial Plan was exceptional. The situation now in terms of institutions, leadership and doctrine is nothing like that. It is difficult to believe that America of today could help a country in that way. Accountability is too fractured. Profiteering has become a way of life. And fundamentalism is too strong.
yongjik 18 hours ago [-]
> some proper bombings
and a war that killed 400,000 Americans.
You want to repeat that history?
theonething 18 hours ago [-]
Here's some history I don't want to repeat:
1939, Nazi Germany starts fucking around and nobody does anything about it and then we have WWII on our hands.
You've totally missed the point. It's precisely because we didn't "properly" bomb Germany to stop that first invasion of Poland, that WWII happened and we lost 400,000 Americans, 6 million Jews etc.
stickfigure 16 hours ago [-]
The only thing this parent got wrong is the dates. Historians seem to generally think that Hitler's regime would have collapsed if the West had stood up to:
* The militarization of the Rhineland in 1936
* The Anschluss with Austria in March 1938
* The annexation of the Sudetenland (and the rest of Czechoslovakia) in October 1938
The German army was weak in the 1930s and his generals very hesitant. Hitler's "reckless" successes gave him credibility and power.
Apparently Hitler was genuinely surprised when the west declared war after the invasion of Poland. He expected the cowardly West to roll over again.
I recommend Childers' "World War II: A Military and Social History" if you're into this kind of thing.
herewulf 7 hours ago [-]
Historians seem to generally think that Hitler's regime never would have existed if the West had not bent Germany over a barrel in 1918 and immediately after.
I mean, if we're going to ruminate over alternate timelines why fast forward to the 1930s..?
stickfigure 6 hours ago [-]
Correct. The western Allies took that lesson to heart at the end of WW2 and rebuilt Germany and Japan. It's almost like we can learn from history!
corimaith 6 hours ago [-]
Not exactly, it was rather that the Treaty of Versailles was painful enough to cause resentment but wasn't harsh enough to cripple Germany. Even so, Weimar Germany managed to stabilize the situation for a decade or so, it's only with the Great Depression that finally broke the Republic's back (and even then, there were all sorts of political shenanigans that could have been manuvered better).
Furthermore, the foreign policy of the Nazis was informed more by their ideological myths than external events. After all, the Nazis admired the Great Imperialist Powers like the British Empire as part of the "Aryan Race". Their enmity was directed at Eastern Europe and the Communists, which had little to do with the enactment of post-war reparations on Germany.
corimaith 6 hours ago [-]
There is alot of paralllels between the mindset of the populace then and today, especially in this thread that enabled Hitler's confidence. The famous Oxford Union "King and Country Debate" in 1933 declared with 275 for and 153 against that "This House under no circumstances would fight for King and Country". It was stated to have a tremendous impression of Hitler's decision-making when generals pushed back against his aggresive actions, and his bluff was rewarded well.
Well, skip forward in 2023 and here we are again...
So we should bomb Israel now as they're fucking around?
17 hours ago [-]
bigyabai 18 hours ago [-]
> The truth is that Iran’s regime is indeed a very shitty one
Relative to their last, America-backed regime? I don't think you're looking at this from an Iranian perspective at all.
simonh 18 hours ago [-]
The regime is spectacularly unpopular with the majority of Iranians.
SllX 17 hours ago [-]
I get this a lot from a guy I do trust, and his old man is an Iranian immigrant, but I also recognize my sources are very biased against the regime.
Is there any good reporting out there or sentiment analysis that can show this? Or is it all word of mouth on the Internet? It's okay if there is nothing, but I'd feel a lot better if there was something substantial to back this up too.
birn559 16 hours ago [-]
Look up the demonstrations in Iran within the last ten years and/or since 2022.
SauciestGNU 18 hours ago [-]
I would be very interested in hearing an Iranian perspective on how daily life changed for people when the Islamic Republic deposed Pahlavi.
mrtksn 18 hours ago [-]
You can tell its a shitty one when a resource rich nation don’t prosper.
catlifeonmars 18 hours ago [-]
The number of resource rich nations that do prosper are few and far between. It’s more the exception than the rule.
llmthrow103 18 hours ago [-]
You think America can occupy a country as big land-wise as Iran with a population approaching 100 million and an actual military?
This is more likely to be the end of the American empire than an actual change in Iran.
YZF 17 hours ago [-]
The US has no desire or intent to occupy Iran. It would take a year just to move enough forces to even contemplate it. Iran is mountainous which makes this a lot harder than Iraq.
It is also completely unnecessary. There are two options. Either the current regime makes a "deal" or it's going to get crippled to the point of irrelevance or removed.
Iran and Iraq are very different. Different culture, people and history. It's also worth remembering Iran is not homogeneous, only 61% of the population are Persians. There are Azeri, there are Kurds and various other ethnic/region minorities.
Iran is extremely vulnerable. It has internal issues, constantly oppressing/suppressing its people. Its economy is in terrible shape. Most of its economic engine can be easily taken out (its main oil terminals). The bulk of its military can be destroyed from the air, it has little defensive or offensive capability. They know it.
dreghgh 15 hours ago [-]
I think what you are missing is how vulnerable the United States and its allies are in the region.
There are much much softer targets than Tel Aviv, many of which Iran has successfully attacked in the past.
The argument that the Iranian people hate their autocratic government might be correct. But a symmetric argument can be made about many of the regimes which work with the United States. No one in those countries is going to war with Iran to defend the US right to have military bases in the Middle East.
dreghgh 13 hours ago [-]
One way of looking at last week's ballistic missile attacks is that they were a way of demonstrating Iran's ability to retaliate in the wider region.
If Ramat Gan is not safe, then the UAE's resorts and airports, Saudi's oil processing facilities, the US installations in Iraq and in the Gulf, etc are not even remotely safe.
YZF 4 hours ago [-]
Israel reportedly took out >50% of the launchers. With complete control of the air space a launcher becomes a single use rather than its intended multiple use. The USA can defend its positions with Aegis/THAAD and its detection capabilities give early warning.
Israel has taken a lot of damage but relatively little loss of life.
Iran would be foolish to expand the war and they know it. They're not going to attack the UAE or Saudi. Iran's bluff has been called.
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
well israel would, because israel's existance depends on them.
from an israeli perspective, things cant be going better. if the US gets pulled into invading iran, then their only effective opponent in the world is vietnam'd. which is great if your soldiers arent the ones dying to IEDs.
without iranian funding/management, Hamas shrivels up and palestine is open to be ethnically cleansed. israel wins a 3000 year old war, and only has to deal with sternly worded letters from the UN for it.
8note 5 hours ago [-]
> israel wins a 3000 year old war
against who? the persians beat the babylonian tyrants and enabled the rebuilding of the temple way back when. Cyrus is a messiah rather than ancient enemy
4 hours ago [-]
prox 15 hours ago [-]
Then wouldn’t it be best to prop up groups on the inside? Start with providing restricted airspaces to groups who hate the regime, and let them be autonomous regions. That wouldn’t need any boots on the ground.
Say you give the Kurds their own part of Iran and help protect their area could weaken the rest. I think there is already such a deal in in Iraq afaik.
enaaem 7 hours ago [-]
So you are betting on a quick regime change? Perhaps a 3 day special military operation? What if that does not happen?
YZF 5 hours ago [-]
Can't compare Ukraine, which is a democracy where the government enjoys broad support, to Iran, which is a dictatorship where 80% of the population wants the government gone and rules by an iron fist and public executions.
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
> or it's going to get crippled to the point of irrelevance or removed.
how are you gonna do that without boots on the ground?
Trump talking about annexing canada made them go from being sick of the liberal party becuase of trudeau to swinging back around to supporting it to an upset victory because they were the only ones standing up to america. and thats america's closest ally, iran is their most bitter foe
this is either gonna end any chance of cooling things off with iran (and make them realize they need a nuclear deterrent yesterday), or turn into another vietnam/afghanistan
the regime was unpopular, the US could have collapsed them slowly like they did the soviets, but instead they let israel's "trust me bro" on nukes pull them into another quagmire.
georgeecollins 6 hours ago [-]
The US occupied Japan and West Germany after WW2. Admittedly mostly with the support of local authorities. But that was the US with a pop of ~133m and Japan with a pop of ~70m. So yes, if the US had the political will it could occupy Iran.
Does it have the political will? No way!
Michael Shurkin-- a former rand analyst and I strongly recommend his podcast-- says that politicians say "there is no military solution" when they mean there is no military solution that people would politically support. The US could do all sorts of things in Iran but the US people would not accept the casualties or the human rights abuses.
nirav72 17 hours ago [-]
Don’t think the current guy in the white house is much into nation building. Also after Iraq and 20 years wasted in Afghanistan - Americans are less likely to care about rebuilding a country.
herewulf 7 hours ago [-]
No, it's damn near geographically impossible or would require cooperation from countries who would be absolutely be opposed to it, and the Pentagon knows it even the small brained people in fancy suits in Washington don't.
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
i doubt israel cares. if they can get the US to invade iran for them, then no matter what happens, their only effective opponent is dismantled. you can definitely hope to springboard that to regional dominance and guaranteeing your existance
nxm 7 hours ago [-]
US is not interested in invading Iran
chasd00 3 hours ago [-]
This is true, no Americans have the desire to invade Iran after Iraq and Afghanistan. If Trump goes in then the next politician that runs on ending the invasion would win in a landslide. Further, there’s just nothing to justify an invasion. Regime change or not, Iran’s nuclear program and militias can now be destroyed from the air uncontested, why invade?
8note 5 hours ago [-]
does that matter to whether the US invades Iran? as long as the right price is paid in TrumpCoins, the US will do whatever
mrtksn 17 hours ago [-]
Well, its done now. All we can do is to hope for the better outcome and ever more powerful ideological regime is not the better outcome. Trump might just guaranteed that though. He isn’t good at this international relations and peacemakings stuff.
pstuart 3 hours ago [-]
Well we had plenty of practice with Iraq and Afghanistan, so we know what to do to turn these countries around! /s
djfivyvusn 18 hours ago [-]
At least 60% of the 90 million are closet Christians or atheists in a country where you get the death penalty for renouncing islam.
You think we need to occupy them? This isn't Iraq.
soganess 17 hours ago [-]
60%? Serious citation needed. The largest Christian population in Iran are Armenians. There are far fewer than 1 million Armenians in Iran. So unless you have evidence for the claim that there are 50+ million atheists in Iran, the number just defies belief.
I would be shocked if there were 50 million atheists in America. Maybe if you included people who are spiritual but do not believe directly in a god. Maybe I could accept it then, but at that point, you are stretching the definition of 'atheist' to its breaking point.
djfivyvusn 15 hours ago [-]
I guess I should have said non Muslim, I knew it was around 60 though.
Did you read the appendix? 85% of respondents have a college degree, with the actual proportion in the population being 28%.
This survey is heavily weighted towards emigres and people who know emigres.
ryantgtg 7 hours ago [-]
Not arguing your point. Just thought I’d share that of the emigres I know (big families that left starting in the late 60s) all are either Christian or Zoorastrian (to some degree). To them the Islamic conquest of Persia is not old news!
selimthegrim 5 hours ago [-]
Not even any Bahais? I know plenty of emigres from the 70s in the US (LA even) who are still culturally Shia and observant
ryantgtg 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe! We mostly just discuss things like, “Do you want more food? Take more food!”
throw72838474 17 hours ago [-]
Trump thinks regime change will happen instantly and easily. Maybe he has secret source front NSA and CIA, who track private messages of Iranians! 60% of Iranians are secret christians. 38% are closeted gays!
A few bombs, everyone comes out of closet, unconditional surrender, democracy, live happily ever after... Sounds like American movie...
jordanb 18 hours ago [-]
Well in that case I'm sure they're totally cool with us bombing them and look forward to being greeted as liberators.
adgjlsfhk1 18 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure that's what the bush crowd was saying about Iraq too
serf 17 hours ago [-]
it wasn't the 'Bush crowd'; it was everyone but a few dissenting critical journalists.[0][1]
war and conflict are almost always bipartisan to some degree.
It's like there's an echo from every other stupid poll-raising middle east adventure we've ever gotten into.
This is a stupid war being waged by idiots against idiots . Unfortunately none of those idiots calling the shots will die, it'll be a bunch of kids who just made the mistake of not being rich and powerful enough.
Tika2234 17 hours ago [-]
America allies, Saudi head chop more than Iran. And there are 100K Jews in Iran and they get into parliament too. Show me that in Israel. You got confused with Saudi and Pakistan. Dont think 60% there Christian or atheist there. Westrrn media is always BS. They got so many wrongs since 2 deacdes ago, I read way less western stuff these days. Otherwise my whole world view looks like Marvel MCU and Tom Cruise with Arnie running around with guns.
sir0010010 6 hours ago [-]
Your numbers are way off: there are between 10k and 20k Jews in Iran. There are also 5 parliament seats in Iranian parliament (out of 290 members) that are reserved for religious minorities, of which two seats are for Armenians, one for Syrians, one for Jews and one for Zoroastrians.
reissbaker 17 hours ago [-]
There many Jews in parliament in Israel!
(If you mean Muslims, or Arabs, there are plenty of those in the Israeli parliament too.)
loandbehold 17 hours ago [-]
Around 20% if Israeli parliament is Arab which is about the same as percentage of Israelis who are Arab.
Tika2234 17 hours ago [-]
It is ending a bit like Ming dynasty and Rome towards the end. Corruptions rife everywhere. Leaders try to be competent and yet ended making more mess. You can already see China is doing 5nm. Best camera phone is Huawei. Best EV in both variants models and quality and total volume sales, BYD. Tesla get decimated. Even AI China is on par. In terms of talents, you can see how well Americans read and count. In 30 years time, you need to learn Chinese and maybe Russian. I dont see America will be much viable pass the next 30 years. If you get a Dem prez, the country will be saturated with illegals. If you get JD, debrs will spiral out of control while opening a warfront in the middle east with Iran and China. This is basically empire ending scenario.
stickfigure 17 hours ago [-]
In 30 years time there will be fewer Mandarin speakers than there are today, and far fewer Russian speakers. This has nothing to do with Americans; four out of five English speakers live in other countries. It's the consequence of Metcalf's Law in age of internet communication, combined with obvious demographic trends.
idiotsecant 17 hours ago [-]
>If you get a Dem prez, the country will be saturated with illegals
Is this, in your mind, how empires end? I'm not sure if you've cracked a history book in a while, but immigrants built this country. We are a country of immigrants. We win when we get the hardest working, most entrepreneurial, boldest and smartest people to come here. Immigrants are no couch potatoes - on average they work harder than American born citizens do by an order of magnitude for way less pay.
Panoramix 12 hours ago [-]
Are they supposed to give up their country just because their nuclear enrichment facilities are damaged?
herbst 16 hours ago [-]
No matter what. America getting them self into this, so fast is going to lead to a lot of worldwide drama distracting from the disastrous financial situation of the US.
pms 12 hours ago [-]
How do you imagine Iran giving up? If anything, it will radicalize. This would happen even if you did anything remotely similar to your kid (i.e., attacked the kid violently because of an accusation they did something wrong), not to mention to a state that revolted against US political manipulation 45 years ago.
I'm wondering whether Trump knows that Iran won't give up and nevertheless pushes forward, or does he really believe that Iran can surrender? I think that's 99.99999% wrong belief. It feels like he is expressing it only to cover up his actions. He probably knows this will lead to a long-term escalation, but thinks that's the right thing to do for the interests of groups/countries he cares about.
CommanderData 18 hours ago [-]
Regime change is what the US and Israel has been doing for the last 40 years in the middle east.
That is literally the ultimate ambition of this war.
There's a long list of middle eastern countries where we've installed our stooges.
YZF 17 hours ago [-]
Israel hasn't really engaged in regime change. If anything the opposite. There was a single failed attempt to get the Christians into power in Lebanon. But mostly sort of the devil I know. We have Hussein in Jordan. We had Assad in Syria. Egypt had its own turmoils but not much Israeli involvement. The PA and Hamas were also viewed as a stabler alternative to chaos. Saudi and the emirates pretty stable. Turkey (not quite middle east but whatever) also have their internal turmoil. Iran has been stable as well.
This is true but that happened mostly after Hamas already took Gaza. Israel would have greatly preferred for the PA to control Gaza. The regime change in this case was done by the Palestinians themselves. The Israeli right wing did to some extent strengthen the division once it was in place. The Wikipedia article reads like a propaganda piece and I would not trust it at all. I've lived in Israel through this period so I have a pretty good first hand knowledge/experience of the events.
The PA didn't really come close to negotiating peace and given Hamas were not able to. See Hamas' suicide bombing campaign during the Oslo peace process. The PA, somewhat as a response to Israeli policy, decided to pursue trying to force Israel to yield via a combination of armed and political struggle and not negotiate with it. Strangely enough security cooperation did continue throughout (and the PA is basically supported by the IDF otherwise it would likely have been toppled). This all happened after the Oslo peace process collpased due to Hamas.
Hikikomori 1 hours ago [-]
Bush pushed for an election as he wanted to have solved the middle east situation before his presidency was over, against both Israel and PAs wishes. Then Hamas won and Bush again pushed PA to do a coup which failed and PA was kicked out of Gaza.
mahkeiro 18 hours ago [-]
They don’t care about the regime, they only want it to be aligned with the US and Israel. The Saudi absolute monarchy regime (something that is way worst than the Iranian one) that is directly coming from middle ages, doesn’t get the same journalistic treatment in the US. Women rights in Iran are lightyears ahead of what is happening in Saudi Arabia. But who cares? Talking about Iran regime change only is pure hypocrisy when your best friend in the region can kill anyone by just deciding it.
tbrownaw 3 hours ago [-]
> They don’t care about the regime, they only want it to be aligned with the US and Israel.
So they want to either change the regime or change the regime, and don't much care which one?
reissbaker 17 hours ago [-]
Actually, Saudi Arabia doesn't beat woman to death for not wearing a hijab (although they're not great either). Saudi is ranked 56 on the Gender Inequality Index, whereas Iran is 113. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index
You claimed "women's rights in Iran are lightyears ahead of Saudi Arabia."
And Iran executes plenty of journalists too.
mahkeiro 13 hours ago [-]
3 years ago Saudi Arabia set into its law (on the international women’s day) that a male relative always have control on a woman. A few years ago only, women were allowed to drive but as of today they are very few female drivers. But that’s not the point, the point is the hypocrisy to point at a political regime because he his not aligned with your views while having as a best friend the worst absolute monarchy.
codethief 5 hours ago [-]
> A few years ago only, women were allowed to drive but as of today they are very few female drivers.
Maybe. But overall Saudi Arabia has been undergoing pretty dramatic changes in recent years: Women can now drive, are no longer required to wear a hijab, are allowed to work, can meet with male friends/non-relatives without the police stopping them, etc. Yes, it's still a far cry from what women are allowed to do in western countries, and absolute change is still slow, but relatively speaking it's still quite impressive and gives me (and apparently people there) hope.
Source: I was in Saudi and talked to people.
reissbaker 13 hours ago [-]
#56 vs #113. They're both bad, but one is worse, and famously murders women for showing their hair. And that's Iran.
t-3 5 hours ago [-]
You can find many videos of people walking around cities in Iran - not only are plenty of women not covering their hair, there's plenty of dyed hair too. Dress is a bit more conservative than western countries, but not by much, and women are obviously free - and feel safe - to leave the house unescorted. Iran has liberalized a lot compared to the post-revolutionary period.
reissbaker 35 minutes ago [-]
Mahsa Amini was famously beaten to death by Iran's morality police in 2022 for the crime of not wearing a hijab. Even modern-day Iran is incredibly oppressive to women, and is currently ranked #113 on the Gender Inequality Index.
koevet 16 hours ago [-]
Saudi Arabia has killed and dismembered a journalist in their own embassy in Istambul, Jamal Khashoggi.
13 hours ago [-]
jordanb 18 hours ago [-]
I'm sure if we keep trying we'll get it right eventually.
bravesoul2 17 hours ago [-]
The plan is working as intended I think. They are not optimising for humanity.
lazide 18 hours ago [-]
Bombings will continue until morale improves?
rich_sasha 16 hours ago [-]
My conclusion from the last 30 years of regime changes in ME is, be careful what you wish for. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt - they all had their regimes "improved" by well-meaning (?) external powers, and they all went pretty badly.
That's not to endorse any of these regimes, including the current Iranian one, just saying the variance is enormous around these events.
birn559 17 hours ago [-]
Iranian people won't suddenly start to like the regime just because certain sites were destroyed.
BeFlatXIII 7 hours ago [-]
Or bomb the oil routes to ensure the rest of the region collapses alongside them.
petre 17 hours ago [-]
Sure. It's nice to hope though. The Iranian establishment is even more rabid now.
ignoramous 9 hours ago [-]
> hope that the destruction of facilities comes with the regime change in Iran
If one were really concerned about the Iranians, the first thing they'd hope for is the containment of radiation not a revolution.
johnfirus 18 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Tika2234 17 hours ago [-]
Why there is regime change there? You are watching fake news projected by your own government for your bubble. The regime now is way stronger. Their economy now is also significantly bigger and stronger (hint: China). A fresh grad there can find job in less than 2 weeks. Try that in UK or NY...even 6mths would be atough endevour.
reissbaker 17 hours ago [-]
Actually, Iran's GDP peaked in 2012 and is currently 30% lower than that peak. Nice try though.
ReptileMan 17 hours ago [-]
Iran has smaller gdp than israel and 12 times it's population. They are a delusional dwarf, and they beat and blind women that refuse to wear headscarf. So I wouldn't mind some dead and crippled clergy and IRGC as long as there are no boots on the ground. Just kill the elites until the population sorts the thing themselves.
koevet 16 hours ago [-]
Like in Lybia?
ReptileMan 16 hours ago [-]
Exactly. Libya is non threatening and doesn't sponsor terrorism as of late. That the Libyans decided to fuck things up internally doesn't change the fact that externally it was a success.
disgruntledphd2 10 hours ago [-]
Well if you ignore all the refugees and the messing up of European politics for a decade then yeah it was ok.
Good ol US was fine though, if that's what you mean.
nevir 16 hours ago [-]
If the regime survives, it is also going to target (and murder) a whole hell of a lot of innocent civilians that it suspects aided Israel (and many/most will almost certainly be innocent). Due process is not a thing with IRGC.
sodality2 22 hours ago [-]
Let’s hope whatever intel that says Iran really does have nukes is true, given its propensity as a scapegoat for previous wars. Don’t forget that less than 2 months ago, senior intelligence officials said conclusively Iran was not close to having nuclear weapons.
Another source, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence[0]
On that page you can download an unclassified 2025 Annual Threat Assessment [pdf] where on page 26 it states:
>> We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so. In the past year, there has been an erosion of a decades-long taboo on discussing nuclear weapons in public that has emboldened nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decisionmaking apparatus. Khamenei remains the final decisionmaker over Iran’s nuclear program, to include any decision to develop nuclear weapons.
I also think there is more reading in there that may interest people here.
Leaving aside the accuracy of this claim, "building a weapon" here means "taking the uranium they've already enriched almost to weapons-grade, and completing final assembly into a working device".
The nuclear physicists got the glory for the Manhattan Project, but the enrichment was the vast majority of the time and cost[1]. Similar ratios apply today. There is zero question that Iran's government is spending a significant fraction of its GDP on enrichment activity that would be economically absurd except as a step towards nuclear weapons--they acknowledge it proudly!
That doesn't mean these strikes were necessarily a good idea. There's no question that Iran was working actively towards a bomb though, even if "building a weapon" gets redefined narrowly to exclude almost all the actual effort.
> "building a weapon" here means "taking the uranium they've already enriched almost to weapons-grade, and completing final assembly into a working device".
Agreed. However, taking into account the full statement (provided by the collective U.S. Intelligence Services) to include the parts about: Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003 and that he has final say in the matter, says they were not working actively towards a bomb.
But there was growing advocation for doing so. Now they have been emboldened further and been given fuel to advocate restarting the program. If Khamenei had so far kept the pro-nuke elements of the regime at bay, this strike may force the very thing that foreign Intelligence roped us into "stopping".
I am not saying they did not have the means; they will rebuild the means, and now they will have the motivation as well as know-how in a way that will be more difficult to stop.
jack_h 17 hours ago [-]
So it seems that due to imprecise language people disagree on the exact place of the red line the US (and Israel) were drawing. The post you responded to was indicating that the red line was, as a sibling comment mentioned, the breakout time from political decision to working nuclear weapon. Many other people, yourself included, seem to consider the red line to be the political decision itself. This red line now may be crossed in response to our first strike after their violation of the breakout time red line. If we were successful it seems as though the message is clear, we will use overwhelming military force to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon. So even if the political decision gets made to build one, any attempt to restart the process - which isn't exactly stealthy - will be met with similar force. If we failed though, then we might get to see a nuclear weapon being used in modern times.
tripletao 15 hours ago [-]
> they were not working actively towards a bomb
I think this becomes a definitions game again. I'd consider a country to be "working actively towards a bomb" when it's taking costly steps that provide no commensurate benefit except towards a nuclear weapons program. At that point, there's no rational explanation for their actions except that they're working towards the bomb.
So e.g. enrichment of uranium to <3.67% (as permitted by the JCPOA) is not such a step, since that's also economically useful for civilian nuclear power. Enrichment to 60% is such a step--the only conceivable civilian uses are niches for which the cost would far exceed any benefit.
It seems you agree they're enriching in the latter way, but you don't count that as "working actively towards a bomb". So what definition are you using for that phrase? We obviously can't just let the Iranian government decide, or they'll define everything short of a successful test as part of their "peaceful explosive lenses program" or whatever.
My general sense is that the JCPOA was working reasonably well, and it's unfortunate that Trump exited. To the extent these strikes were a necessary solution, they might be to a problem of his own making. I agree that Iran could be emboldened and merely delayed here. That may imply an inevitable endgame of either regime change or near-total destruction of Iran's economic capacity, big escalations and risks.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
“Intelligence community” can be wrong. It’s not as if they are infallible.
1659447091 17 hours ago [-]
Sure, but so can foreign Intelligence that the America First Trump team decided was way better than US Intelligence that tax payers are paying obscene amounts for. So, I guess we just pick which ever one fits what we find more important to listen to.
This stinks of Iraq & WMD. Which the U.S. Intelligence made drastic changes to prevent happening again.
Only now we were on the side of saying there is no proof it was actively being worked on, and the person/state with "proof" also happens to be the state that has been bitterly opposed to Iran and started launching unprovoked missiles. That state also knows how to get what it wants from this administration and suddenly we go from, there is no proof they are doing nefarious things with their program, to they are about nuke us all if we don't do something; all in a matter of weeks.
firesteelrain 17 hours ago [-]
The alternative was to do nothing , let them continue the obvious nuclear weapon nation program. I am surprised we hadn’t attacked them earlier given what they did to our troops in Iraq with EFPs or Ukraine with the Shahed drones.
krisoft 7 hours ago [-]
> The alternative was to do nothing , let them continue the obvious nuclear weapon nation program.
Or the alternative being the JCPOA. Which was an agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions.
An agreement which failed because the US side reimplemented the sanctions while Iran was in compliance with the agreement.
1659447091 17 hours ago [-]
> The alternative was to do nothing
Yes & No. Thats what I understood the Trump campaign promised, to stop military meddling in other countries religious (or otherwise) conflicts.
Diplomacy is not nothing, and has kept the Iran program from restarting (going by US reports that it was stopped). Now it is all but sure to start up again. Unless the goal was for the US to be suckered into forcing a regime change, and we all know how well those attempts have gone.
> I am surprised we hadn’t attacked them earlier given what they did to our troops in Iraq with EFPs
If it happened at that time with proof and congressional approval then okay, but thats not an excuse for now. Thats how states end up in a war that lasts for a couple or more millennia
firesteelrain 12 hours ago [-]
President at the time didn’t need congressional approval to say blow up the EFP factories.
Everyone keeps saying Trump didn’t have approval when Congress authorized this
18 hours ago [-]
skissane 18 hours ago [-]
I think a good way of explaining what the Iranian government has been doing, is actively working on reducing breakout time without actually making the breakout decision
"Breakout time" is how long it takes a country between the political decision to build a nuclear weapon, and actually having one which is militarily usable
econ 18 hours ago [-]
Bibi has repeatedly informed us the bomb would be ready in the next few months for 23 years or so.
Saddam also had WMDs, we just don't know where.
Etc
birn559 16 hours ago [-]
Israel has also been sabotaging their program and murdering scientists for the same time. Maybe it's an instance of the prevention paradox? Together with the fact that things sometimes naturally need MUCH more time than anticipated?
8note 4 hours ago [-]
the biggest blocker remains - a religious rule set by the dictator banning all WMDs. not just nukes, but chemical and radiological weapons too.
an iran with a bomb would have to not be the relogious dictatorship anymore, and whatever coup that allowed for the bomb might not have the same opinions about the west as the current one
nsingh2 18 hours ago [-]
He's been saying this since 1992, so 33 years so far.
econ 18 hours ago [-]
What is the term for political leaders who fill their speeches with a Boogeyman rather than doing their job? I feel there should be a term for it. Ideally one that describes them in pairs. Like a boogey marriage.
krona 17 hours ago [-]
> Saddam also had WMDs, we just don't know where.
Presumably if Saddam had built a large reinforced concrete bunker deep in the side of a mountain hours from the nearest city, that might be a place fairly high on your checklist?
15 hours ago [-]
devcpp 15 hours ago [-]
Why bring him up? No one cares about him. He's been lying about it all those years until it became true, that doesn't mean it's still false. I can say the universe will be destroyed in a year, I'll eventually be right.
jiggawatts 18 hours ago [-]
"Will be done in 'x' months" vs "Could be ready within 'x' months" are distinct statements.
My project managers often ask how long a project would take. I might say something like "two weeks after we're approved to start".
The PMs will wait a few months, approve the project, and then look flabbergasted when it is not instantaneously completed! "But you had all this time! Months ago you said it would take weeks!"
biglyburrito 18 hours ago [-]
You would have thought folks would have learned from the Iraq War that the US lies. I'm no fan of Khomeini's sabre-rattling, but if people are really buying into the narrative that we did this because they had nukes, idk what to tell you besides go read your history.
_heimdall 18 hours ago [-]
It isn't just the US that lies, its politicians and leaders. People in charge want to keep power, and the only ones willing to fight their way to the top don't deserve the power of office.
verisimi 18 hours ago [-]
Folks do know. Folks knew before the Iraq war too.
But what does this generic knowledge have to do with anything, when the military action is already decided for geo-political reasons? The only decision to make is what pretext to use.
In a way, the 'iraq wmd' justification has proven it's value as a pretext - so why not tweak it and use it again?
kelnos 21 hours ago [-]
"Not close" doesn't mean they're not working on it. I think it's reasonable to expect that unspoken bit is "... but their current avenue of work is going to eventually succeed".
I'm tired of the US playing puppetmaster (poorly) around the world, getting involved in conflicts that have nothing to do with us (or rather, creating conflicts when it has to do with access to oil or something). And it's not like we haven't messed up Iran enough already.
But I do not want a nuclear-armed Iran to be a thing. If they were working on it and had a solid program that was likely to bear fruit, I hate to say it, but this was probably the right move. But this is a big "if"; I don't trust this administration to tell the truth about any of this, no more than I trusted Bush Jr when he said Iraq had nukes.
dj_gitmo 22 hours ago [-]
If they thought Iran had nukes they wouldn’t be attacking them. Nobody thinks Iran had a nuclear weapon, or that they are even trying that hard to get one.
trebligdivad 22 hours ago [-]
I don't understand this argument; why would you have a large, acknowledged, underground nuclear purification unit if it wasn't for bombs?
Why wouldn't you cooperate with their regular IAEA inspection if it wasn't for bombs?
friendlyasparag 22 hours ago [-]
They might be making the bombs, but once they are made (and the delivery mechanism exists), then they wouldn’t be attacked for fear of nuclear retaliation.
The past two-ish decades has made it clear that nuclear weapons are the only defense against an aggressive power arbitrarily invading.
skissane 18 hours ago [-]
> then they wouldn’t be attacked for fear of nuclear retaliation
Even supposing Iran developed a nuclear weapon, their ability to engage in nuclear retaliation depends on (a) the number of warheads, (b) the available delivery mechanisms
An Iran which had only a handful of warheads, and rather limited delivery mechanisms (few or no ICBMs, no SLBMs, no long-range bomber capability) might find its ability to engage in nuclear retaliation against the US extremely limited
Even attempting to use nuclear weapons against Israel or regional US allies, there would be a massive attempt by Israel/US/allies to intercept any nuclear armed missile before it reached its destination
People argued missile defence (as in Reagan's "Star Wars") would never work against the Soviets because they could always just overwhelm it given the superabundance of warheads and delivery systems they had. The same logic does not apply to Iran, because even if it did build a nuke, initially it would only have a handful. Only if they were allowed to build out their nuclear arsenal and delivery systems without intervention, over an extended period, might that eventually come true.
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
if israel and america actually believed iran was as close to nukes as bibi said it was, then the variance on the prediction, and the chance of iran already having nukes and already being able to deliver them via ballistic/hamas means would be too large to risk something like this
north korea and pakistan actually have nukes. we can be sure of that because of the bullshit they get up to with full impunity from the US. iran doesnt have shit (and it might even have been working in good faith with the nato initiatives, although probably not 100%) thats why it got bombed. and they are gonna learn a fool me once lesson from this. they're gonna go even harder on the anti US pole with china, with the people begrudgingly backing the regime that could have toppled soviet style if the US was patient.
this whole thing was shortsighted from israel and trump should have kept to his "america first" promise
dreghgh 7 hours ago [-]
They just hit population centers in Israel with high explosives this week. Clearly if they had a nuke they would be able to deliver it.
jhanschoo 18 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that the prospect of nuclear retaliation against hawkish US allies can contribute greatly to peace in the region.
xdennis 4 hours ago [-]
This is the pattern of constantly moving the goalposts:
- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past nuclear-reactor grade. What's that? They're enriching past 5%?
- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past medical purposes grade. What's that? They're enriching past 20%?
- There's no evidence Iran has enough to build bombs. What's that? They have enough to build 10 bomb?
- There's no evidence they have a way to deliver bombs <-- you are here
If Israel doesn't continuously try to stop Iran, they might even have a 10 Megaton ICBM and you'll be saying "there's no evidence Iran has ever said it want's to destroy Israel".
stogot 18 hours ago [-]
This is what I’d expect Iran to do instead of ICBM
But they do have ballistic missiles and can hit US allies
ra0x3 21 hours ago [-]
This was my thinking as well. Iran sending a nuke at anyone effectively is the end of Iran (and many of its people). Something something…mutually assured destruction (e.g., North Korea has nukes, makes threats, doesn’t use them)
crystal_revenge 19 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately MAD in the classic sense doesn't apply here. Yes if Iran launched a nuke at Israel, or vice versa, and the other had nuclear capabilities, they would destroy each other, but the MAD scenario between the USSR and the United States doesn't really play out here.
The biggest global risk in this case would be that tactical nukes would be back on the menu which would immediately change the face of modern warfare.
jordanb 18 hours ago [-]
I feel like it's been demonstrated that if Israel orders the United States to destroy the world on its behalf, the United States will do it.
lostlogin 18 hours ago [-]
So Iran is a special case compared to every other country getting them?
card_zero 21 hours ago [-]
So the reason to make an exception to the Non-Proliferation Treaty just for the giant tyrannical fundamentalist state is, what, because otherwise they might get insecure and anxious?
OK, they never signed up to it, but still.
WaxProlix 19 hours ago [-]
Are you referring to Israel here, who stole the recipe from their closest 'ally' and has made not one or two but hundreds of nukes outside of the NPT?
jampekka 14 hours ago [-]
AFAIK the recipe was given to them by the French.
lostlogin 18 hours ago [-]
Allegedly.
amanaplanacanal 20 hours ago [-]
We made an exception for Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
coredog64 19 hours ago [-]
North Korea left the NPT, Israel never signed it.
coredog64 19 hours ago [-]
The prior government did sign it and there’s very good reason to hold successor states to the treaties signed before they existed.
lostlogin 18 hours ago [-]
What about the agreement to protect Ukraine if they gave up the nuclear weapons?
Trusting the US or any agreement with it would be foolish.
20 hours ago [-]
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
the NPT is a joke. the only "authorized" nukes are the ones you can keep
Workaccount2 21 hours ago [-]
The problem is that these people are religiously unhinged. They are executing Gods will with God on their side.
crystal_revenge 19 hours ago [-]
Ted Cruz is explicitly advocating that Christians are biblically commanded to defend the modern day state of Israel, and that this alone justifies our attack on Iran.
Ted Cruz can blather whatever he wants (and he also footnoted it to say it was only HIS belief), but only Iran has holy-text justification for the destruction of all Jews, mentioned numerous times in authenticated Hadiths (just search them for "The last hour will not come")
yencabulator 20 hours ago [-]
Unlike the American evangelicals and the Israeli?
adgjlsfhk1 17 hours ago [-]
one of the scariest parts of the current US administration is that there is a fairly strong evangelical Christian belief that a massive (possibly nuclear) war in Israel is a necessary precursor to the 2nd coming.
Workaccount2 11 hours ago [-]
That's from Islam. Infact the entire point of ISIS was to manifest this prophecy
TimorousBestie 7 hours ago [-]
Evangelical Christianity shares the same belief. That’s why the red heifer breeding program [0] is supported by US Christian orgs [1].
In the past 24 hours alone, all 3 parties in this conflict have attributed their success to God. You genuinely, honestly have to be more specific in your comment because not a single involved participant is a fully secular country.
So, with that being said - which nuclear-obsessive theocracy do you support?
ta8903 16 hours ago [-]
To be fair it's the same god.
simonh 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
israel's whole existance is based on the idea that they are gods chosen people and god promised them that land, and they must defend it or it dishonors him.
going by project 2025, theres a very significant and influential portion of the american conservative sphere that is pants on head evangelical. and the idea of supporting israel as their christian duty is a huge part of that
lets not pretend this isnt the crusades with nukes. all parties here are operating on barbaric political principles
14 hours ago [-]
LtWorf 11 hours ago [-]
Didn't israel strike first? How is iran the bad guy here when they got attacked?
mhb 3 hours ago [-]
That's the entire underpinning of your world view? Bad guy is guy who struck first?
LtWorf 1 hours ago [-]
If you consider israel to be the good guy, you should win the Olympics of mental gymnastics.
mhb 27 minutes ago [-]
Sorry if considering anything beyond first guy bad was too cerebral. Maybe ELI3 is needed?
lostlogin 18 hours ago [-]
Are you referring to Iran or Israel?
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
this describes both jihadis and the chosen people. the whole region is operating on pre enlightenment notions of diplomacy
Add to that, its "deterrence" arsenal of intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) are credible militarily only as nuclear delivery systems. For example, the "Khaybar Breaker" rocket (English meaning), referring to a destruction of an historic Jewish stronghold, leaving little to imagination, when equiped with conventional warheads are simply an expensive way to ruin hospital wings. But, when you merge heavy rockets with diligent production of precursors of nuclear weapons, not only is that work toward military use of a nuclear weapon-- it creates a powerful inertia toward actually completing that work, from two directions, lest your very expensive work prove pointless. The current war is vividly demonstrating that IRBM's are not deterrent unless (a) impossibly numerous or (b) unconventionally armed. A threshold IRBM threat makes it more, not less, likely to provoke a first strike against it, as has occurred.
Animats 19 hours ago [-]
Also note that Iran does have an ICBM of sorts. They have a space launch vehicle, capable of putting maybe 600kg in orbit. Anything that can achieve orbit can also be used as an ICBM. The US tends to operate on the assumption that it can bomb abroad without return fire. That may have just changed. The US has never attacked anybody with significant missile capability before.
The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable. Washington, D.C. has some drone and missile defenses. But the rest of the east coast is not protected much.
Iran could also attack the US with drones launched from a small ship off the US east coast. Roughly the same technique Ukraine just used on Russia, using some small expendable ship instead of a trailer.
.
roncesvalles 19 hours ago [-]
>The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable.
This would mean complete suicide for Iran. The US military basically exists to inflict unimaginable hurt on anyone who does this. Not to mention, an attack on the US is an attack on NATO.
bjoli 17 hours ago [-]
There are loads of NATO countries that will not assist the US in this case because NATO is a defensive alliance not a "this country responded my armed aggression, let's strike them" alliance.
LtWorf 11 hours ago [-]
If there was such a thing of an european politician that doesn't just do what USA tells them…
bjoli 7 hours ago [-]
How about Denmark?
Donald Trump has made it very clear that the US should be looked upon as an adversary.
LtWorf 6 hours ago [-]
Denmark in greenland are as much colonizers as USA would be.
xdennis 4 hours ago [-]
There were no people in Greenland when it was settled by the Norse in the 10th century. The current Inuit population arrived after the Europeans in the 14th century.
LtWorf 1 hours ago [-]
The norse didn't "settle", in the sense that they all died off before the current inhabitants.
bjourne 5 hours ago [-]
Article 5 doesn't count since the US very clearly started the war. Even the NATO articles recognize that Iran has the right to defend itself.
CamperBob2 17 hours ago [-]
The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable
Iran would definitely possess nuclear weapons after doing something like that. The only question is whether they're armed to explode in the air or when they hit the ground.
tguvot 20 hours ago [-]
for people who don't follow news. last year Iran strikes on Israel with IRBM (two times, 150 missiles each time) weren't particularly effective (either intercepted or falling in empty fields). On the other side Israel attempt on taking our Iranian AD was success.
It led Iran to make 2 decisions
- Accelerate production of IRBM in order to have 10000 in stock and to build 1000 launchers in order to execute massive launches that will not possible to defend against
- Apparently the did decide to mate their IRBM with nukes as recently there was meeting between whoever managed iranian missiles problem and heads of nuclear project (there is economist article about it).
This comes against backdrop of hamas and hezbollah been wiped. especially hezbollah which was supposed to be strike force against israel with estimated 100k-200k missiles and rockets.
PS. to those who write that jordan/usa intercepted most/a lot. they (together with saudi arabia, uk and france intercepted drones and cruise missiles. out of all IRBM only 6 were intercepted with SM3 missiles from USA ship)
Stevvo 19 hours ago [-]
Hamas has not "been wiped"; they have more members than before October 7th.
amluto 18 hours ago [-]
Do they have much in the way of military capability right now? They could have a full two million committed members, and that might be a serious long term strategic issue for Israel, but the actual immediate threat might be nominal.
tguvot 15 hours ago [-]
some yes. left over weapon. they can booby trap buildings, attach explosives to apc/tanks. maybe some rpg. Occasional rocket info Israel. A bunch of undiscovered tunnels
but now after their command was wiped out and they can't sell aid, they have serious financial problems (they need to pay their fighters. it's very transactional).
but in case idf will leave gaza, they will have enough power to dominate the strip.
petesergeant 18 hours ago [-]
> Hamas [has] more members than before October 7th
I'm skeptical of this; any source?
mieses 19 hours ago [-]
I hope their new members are midwit western university students not capable of speaking fluent Arabic while extinguishing your consciousness.
CapricornNoble 19 hours ago [-]
> for people who don't follow news. last year Iran strikes on Israel with IRBM (two times, 150 missiles each time) weren't particularly effective (either intercepted or falling in empty fields).
For clarification, those interception efforts last year required massive assistance from the US and Jordan, and required a hugely disproportionate and unsustainable investment of munitions to pull off. What we've seen in the last week is that Israeli air defenses are much more brittle than they want anyone to believe.
EDIT: For the down-voters, here's Bloomberg citing Israeli media that defending against Operation True Promise cost ~$1 billion USD: https://archive.is/WHDvG
Everyone in Iran who decided to follow international law and not pursue nuclear weapons including Khamenei look like clowns right now.
devcpp 15 hours ago [-]
They were putting together advanced parts towards a nuclear weapon and IAEA says they weren't cooperating. Everyone knew what this meant. Even themselves, why did they need JCPOA otherwise? Just explain why you have 60% enriched uranium.
jordanb 7 hours ago [-]
The IAEA said they weren't cooperating as of this month. Before that they were cooperating despite the fact that the US had withdrawn from the nuclear deal.
I wonder if anything started happening recently that would make Iran less interested in cooperating with the IAEA?
In fact, I think all evidence points to them removing assets from inspected sites knowing that those sites would soon be targets.
> Just explain why you have 60% enriched uranium.
For leverage, obviously.
If Israel were Iran's only rival then it would obviously do everything in its power to become nuclear capable because Israel violated international law to become nuclear capable. However, Iran has many rivals and does not want to set off a nuclear arms race in the middle east.
They also hoped to use the nuclear program as a bargaining chip to lift sanctions.
So Iran had reason to set themselves up to be able to get nuclear weapons, without actually getting nuclear weapons.
Now, that whole policy looks foolish and Iran's only real rational option is to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.
tguvot 2 hours ago [-]
iaea report saying that they been non-cooperative from 2019 and has been hiding stuff
Nobody believes that running a secretive bomb-proof underground bunker full of gas centrifuges is "not pursuing nuclear weapons". We're not stupid.
jordanb 7 hours ago [-]
These sites were under IAEA supervision until recently.
stickfigure 5 hours ago [-]
They enrich uranium. Supervising the process doesn't change the process.
8note 4 hours ago [-]
however, they were supervised to not be enriching to bomb level concentration.
the purpose of the bomb shelter seems obvious - israel is gonna be bombing because israel likes bombing stuff
uhhhd 22 hours ago [-]
The photos of the facilities are literally all over the internet. The IAEA knew about it and knew Iran was enriching weapons grade uranium. This isn't Iraq 2.
sodality2 22 hours ago [-]
Flies in the face of the US intelligence community’s report at the end of March [0], but, I am not floored if true. Do you have any sources?
Edit: If you mean "Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)" [1], that report explicitly mentions up to 60% which is not weapons grade.
This stuff gets grammar-hacked a million different ways.
Yes, 60% enriched Uranium is not weapons-grade, but it can be made weapons grade very quickly. Once you've gotten to 60%, you've done 99% of the work - U-235 starts as such a small percentage of natural Uranium that most of the process is spent at very low concentrations.
It can simultaneously be true that Iran isn't "imminently creating a bomb" and also that they're actively working towards a breakout point where they could build a dozen bombs in very quick succession once they did decide to go forwards with the process.
I don't personally think they were rushing towards a bomb at this moment, but Israel isn't really in the mood to wait around until they decide to do so.
hollerith 21 hours ago [-]
60% enrichment may not be weapons grade, but it takes only days or weeks to go from 60% to 90%. It is much easier than going from natural uranium to 60%.
frontfor 21 hours ago [-]
60% enrichment level is significantly higher than what’s required for peaceful purposes. To say that it’s not weapons grade is just disingenuous.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
Except that it is literally not weapons grade.
It turns out there's a big gap between most peaceful purposes and weapons grade, and this was in that gap.
twothreeone 20 hours ago [-]
Wikipedia points to a source that says it is used for parts of a multi-stage fusion bomb:
> Uranium with enrichments ranging from 40% to 80% U-235 has been used in large amounts in U.S. thermonuclear weapons as a yield-boosting jacketing material for the secondary fusion stage
Ah yes, alongside the weapons grade steel and weapons grade copper.
Retric 19 hours ago [-]
There’s no minimum qualification for steel to be useful in a bomb, there is for uranium which this meets.
mindslight 18 hours ago [-]
Just to be clear, this isn't "useful [to make] a bomb" - it's useful in a thermonuclear warhead that already has a primary fission stage using the originally-mentioned highly enriched weapons grade uranium, plus a second fusion stage that (as far as I'm aware) Iran is not working to develop.
edit: phrasing. it feels like we're going around in circles nitpicking based on a poor framing and the tendency for innuendo on this topic
05 4 hours ago [-]
> plus a second fusion stage that (as far as I'm aware) Iran is not working to develop.
All modern nukes are two stage designs, Iran would be insane not to have a fusion stage. It would basically be a Hiroshima style dirty bomb with just 1.5% fissible mass actually fissioned.
mindslight 4 hours ago [-]
I'm well aware of the difference in yield, but I thought a second fusion stage required modeling and testing well beyond basic development? Like I take a quick look at Wikipedia for what devices (for example) India has, and it seems to say whether they contain a significant fusion stage is an open question.
Hiroshima was pretty terrible as it was. And I thought the capability that everyone focuses on because it gets nations a seat at the nuclear table was just basic fission weapons. But please correct me if I am wrong.
05 2 hours ago [-]
> I thought a second fusion stage required modeling and testing well beyond basic development
The bottleneck is UF₆ centrifuges, not the modeling. They're definitely aiming for a fission-fusion design: "The sources note that Iran has attempted to produce deuterium-tritium gas on its own inside Iran - with the help of Russian scientists - but has so far been unable to do so, and due to pressures by the Iranian leadership to accelerate the weapons production program, decided to try to purchase this substance abroad." [0]
India and Pakistan did their first tests ~30 years ago, a lot has changed since then and if you're building a nuke in '25 might as well spend some cash on a simulation cluster and buy some multiphysics simulation software from Russia..
[0] The sources note that Iran has attempted to produce deuterium-tritium gas on its own inside Iran - with the help of Russian scientists - but has so far been unable to do so, and due to pressures by the Iranian leadership to accelerate the weapons production program, decided to try to purchase this substance abroad.
Retric 18 hours ago [-]
You might want to rephrase that as a thermonuclear warhead is obviously a bomb making it “useful in a bomb.”
Also, you can use 60% enriched uranium in the primary stage at the cost of a much larger, less efficient, and dirty device.
fallingknife 21 hours ago [-]
When the only purpose of stepping into that gap is to get to weapons grade, it doesn't really work as a gray area.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ohazi 20 hours ago [-]
Fuel grade is like 3%. It's exponentially harder to go from 3%-60% (months-years) than 60%-90%(days-weeks). So no, the only reason to enrich that high is to keep your breakout time threateningly short.
sorcerer-mar 19 hours ago [-]
Which still, astonishingly, does not make it weapons grade.
nothrabannosir 17 hours ago [-]
Yes brother you are technically correct about that substring of that comment. “Weapons-grade” was indeed not 100% accurate and therefore, technically , inaccurate. That is true, you are right.
That same comment also said, even led with “flies in the face of”. That was the most important part of the comment: ‘saying that Iran is enriching weapons-grade uranium “flies in the face of” intelligence reports which reported no weapons-grade uranium.’ But that part was not correct: the difference between Iran’s uranium (60% enriched) and weapons-grade uranium, while >0, is not large enough to characterize that assessment “flying in the face of”.
So yes if you focus on that substring of the comment you are right. But why would you? It’s not the point of the comment.
Which makes it nit picking. Which is why you’re getting so much pushback.
sorcerer-mar 7 hours ago [-]
The parent comment says it flies in the face of the US IC's holistic assessment of Iran's efforts. Which it does.
Ancapistani 19 hours ago [-]
True, but can you name a reason to create a stockpile of 60% enriched uranium that doesn't involve weapons?
sorcerer-mar 9 hours ago [-]
Yep! Negotiation.
18 hours ago [-]
Retric 20 hours ago [-]
The only reason to make 60% is to make a weapon, and it’s actually useful in a weapon.
Saying it’s not weapons grade only means you haven’t finished or intend to use something else for the initial stage.
sorcerer-mar 19 hours ago [-]
> only means you haven’t finished or intend to use something else for the initial stage
So in other words it’s not weapons grade?
Retric 19 hours ago [-]
No, 60% is a weapons grade enrichment level, but does not qualify in specific weapons grade categories.
Reduced fat milk is often specifically referring to 2% milk, but 1% milk is also reduced fat milk.
17 hours ago [-]
sorcerer-mar 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Retric 19 hours ago [-]
Everything I just said was factually accurate.
There’s a lot of misunderstanding around this stuff. Technically all you need for a bomb is the ability to go prompt critical on demand which you can do at surprisingly low enrichment levels. What’s a useful weapons grade enrichment to you has a lot to do with your delivery systems not some universal constant. If you’re looking to fit something in a WWII bomber or early generation ICBM that imposes specific limitations.
sorcerer-mar 9 hours ago [-]
Being able to produce weapons grade uranium != producing weapons grade uranium. It's not that complicated.
And yes, in an alternative universe where delivery systems also just appear out of nowhere, you could sprinkle a million tons of 1% uranium over a city.
Retric 3 hours ago [-]
It’s not about delivery systems just appearing, the logistics of tossing around nuclear weapons in the Middle East using modern technology allows for a vastly larger bombs without significant issues.
Little boy was a logistical issue at the time but only 4,400 kg. You can buy a used A380 for a few 10’s of millions. Convert that to a drone is fairly cheap, and you end up with a vastly cheaper system than the cost of producing a nuclear bomb.
Obviously a subsonic aircraft isn’t ideal, but historic ICBM’s ended up being designed for multiple bombs that’s a lot of leeway if you use the same system to deliver a single bomb. What the US considered weapons grade in the 40’s through the Cold War is based on assumptions that simply don’t apply here.
827a 21 hours ago [-]
But maybe a little harshly: Who cares? Does it somehow raise the moral foundation of the operation if they had nukes? Would the attack suddenly be unethical if it was only against a military target with the public, accepted purpose to, one day, be able to develop precursors to nuclear weapons? Why?
That's like saying driving from NYC to Sacramento is just a "Stepping Stone" to driving to SF. You've done most of the drive.
To get 1kg of U-235 requires 1.11kg at 90% purity, 1.67kg at 60% purity, and 140.6kg at natural 0.711% purity.
Teever 19 hours ago [-]
Sure, but if this is being talked about like there's a legal justification to take military action then there actually has to be legal justification.
Was what Iran doing illegal?
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
It was a pre-emptive strike based on the behaviors of a state sponsor of terrorism. It’s not like the US and its allies have not tried to stop this before - see StuxNet
drewwwwww 17 hours ago [-]
bad news about who the US sponsors
Teever 18 hours ago [-]
Sure, but is a kinetic pre-emptive strike in this context legal?
Because this is what underlies all of this -- is the premise that Iran is behaving in an unacceptable and illegal fashion and therefore a legal response with violence is justified.
This all presupposes that Iran is breaking the law with their production of nuclear weapons. Are they breaking the law with their production of nuclear weapons?
dralley 18 hours ago [-]
What does "legal" even really mean between states at war. The consequences typically come down to a popularity contest and Iran is one of the few states with fewer friends than Israel.
Was Iran's activities funding militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which launched attacks against Israel and US forces "legal"? Which of the US' activities were "legal"? It's all mostly a bad joke.
bjourne 5 hours ago [-]
> Was Iran's activities funding militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which launched attacks against Israel and US forces "legal"?
Is the US funding of Ukrainian militias "legal"?
simonh 17 hours ago [-]
It's tricky. Arming a country or group than then launches an attack, or uses those weapons in a war, doesn't make you a participant in that conflict. This is why Europe and the US can supply weapons to Ukraine without being participants in a conflict with Russia.
However Iran has the stated intention of destroying the state of Israel, and actively incites it's proxies to attack Israel, and this could be seen as a valid justification for taking action. Not a lawyer though.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
Countries can attack others. There is not like a superset of a country over all countries that says what is and isn’t legal. All we have are agreements and treaties.
Not that we would or should but the US could attack any number of countries today and only if one or more countries stopped the US would the victor be able to say it’s illegal.
jandrewrogers 17 hours ago [-]
This is between nation states. Concepts like laws and legality really don’t apply at this level of abstraction. Agreements are a matter of convenience and convention because there is no higher authority that can enforce them.
Geopolitics operates in an explicitly anarchic arena.
codethief 5 hours ago [-]
I read an interview with a nuclear physicist the other day who said "If you can do 60%, you've nailed the technique, so 90% is not difficult anymore."
Besides, there is no non-military need for enriching uranium beyond a few percent, so it's very clear what those 60% mean.
busterarm 21 hours ago [-]
You only get to 60% on the road to 90%. At 60% it has no other useful purpose.
tmnvix 21 hours ago [-]
Are there other uses for highly enriched uranium? Wikipedia mentions 'research' I think.
Has the Iranian government ever explained why they are enriching uranium?
wombatpm 19 hours ago [-]
Their story is a desire to build reactors for when the oil runs out. Energy security
dralley 18 hours ago [-]
Nobody builds reactors with 60% enriched uranium
Qem 2 hours ago [-]
Well, if you have an expansionist apartheid state nearby, bent on seeking any pretense to sabotage or get your infrastructure air raided, higher enrichment factors would make much easier to safeguard fuel, given not high enough to easily cause a criticality incident.
Say you have 10 ton of 2.5% enriched uranium to safeguard. If you turn it to 60% HEU, now you have only ~400kg of fuel to safeguard against air raids. Density of uranium is ~19 ton/m³, so that would correspond to just 21 liters of HEU, one bucket worth, what would make it very easy to transport and hide. That would make it possible to split it and store in safe locations, for example, inside some deep boreholes, far apart to each other, making it impervious to attack, for the duration of hostilities. Once they pass, it can be recovered and diluted back to 2.5% with natural uranium, reconstituting your original 10-ton fuel amount.
wombatpm 5 hours ago [-]
That’s what their story is.
jiggawatts 17 hours ago [-]
You only need 5% enriched for that.
nradov 22 hours ago [-]
No one in the US government was claiming that Iran had nuclear weapons. The stated reason is that they were close to having nuclear weapons based on the current rate of uranium enrichment, anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Of course we may never know whether that's really true.
1659447091 20 hours ago [-]
> The stated reason is that they were close to having nuclear weapons
No the US was claiming: "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so." in it's 2025 Threat Assessment. The reports believes they were not working on them and Khamenei has the final authority to restart the program which he had not done. However, they believe there was growing pressured to do so.
Trump just gave the guy reason to green light a weapons project he had so far not wanted.
if iran had nukes, israel and america wouldnt have dared bomb it. iran wasnt even close, and they must be kicking themselves for that now
herbst 15 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter if it's true at this point. The US can not involve themself in every fucking war for their own motives, just by calling "Bombs" they did this a few times to often. I really hope this is going to have consequences for orange man.
TeeMassive 21 hours ago [-]
The predicate that Iran has them but would show restraint is the same that same that they don't have them but will show restraint and not use desperate measures like blowing up the entire Middle Eastern oil production and distribution network and ports and not use dirty bombs.
Which shows how much of BS the pro-war argument was to begin with.
eastbound 17 hours ago [-]
Iran has “Death to America” as an hymn. It is commonly accepted that a nation directly threatening others of death deserves the war.
It's not like for like, but if you have a rabid population with low education being told to say stuff like this, they will, just because of social pressure and brainwashing.
Related, example of that brainwashing at scale:
- Killing people bad, but patriotic as a soldier.
- Killing people fine on TV, procreational entertainment bad.
- People told what to wear bad, but telling people they must be clothed, good.
- Religion says no killing, or protect those not of the same religion. People still kill, seen as no conflict of interest at all.
- Hording wealth seen as successful, yet society and the world has people suffering and illegal immigration as a consequence of not having it.
- People who don't work are grifters, but most people secretly want to quit their job and not work. Told to see the non workers as people sponging off society.
- Forced to work until your health fails, seen as acceptable.
Point being, no moral high ground because we're all brainwashed.
xdennis 4 hours ago [-]
> They chant "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" every week (on Fridays) in Iran led by the Iranian government.
vs.
> Some band in the USA wrote a song about bombing Iran in 1980.
Yeah, those are completely equal.
19 hours ago [-]
8note 5 hours ago [-]
"unauthorized" is a weird description. the iranian government is the sovereign regulator in iran, and prsumably they did authorize it. they dont need anyone else's authorization, same as nobody authorizes what happens in the US except the US government
sanderjd 5 hours ago [-]
I think it's reasonable to use "unauthorized" to include international law and treaties. It is true that the US (and maybe every country?) also does "unauthorized" things, by that definition. But I still think it is a reasonable word to use.
smcl 12 hours ago [-]
In ten years time you’re going to claim that war with Iran was stupid, avoidable and something you were against all along.
mandmandam 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
HDThoreaun 10 hours ago [-]
The pager attacks were surgical. The counterfactual is Israel blowing up hundreds of homes which would lead to many, many more civilian deaths. If you saw the videos people 3 feet away from the pagers were completely unharmed. I can not think of a more surgical attack at the scale Israel carried out.
cbeach 7 hours ago [-]
The pagers were used by Hezbollah as they were paranoid that Israel had infiltrated smartphones.
It'd be ignorant to think that only Hezbollah uses pagers in that part of the world, and that Hezbollah would be completely isolated from civilians, including children.
The parent comment says that hundreds were maimed or killed. That is accurate, and clearly contradicts any claim to the strike's "surgical" nature.
neuronic 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
smcl 11 hours ago [-]
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shmoe 19 hours ago [-]
From what I read, they likely still couldn't penetrate the halls at Fordow, which are about 260 feet underground and encased in 30000psi concrete. Did we even do anything there?
crystal_revenge 19 hours ago [-]
Which is precisely what makes the calculus of this so dangerous, something I don't think many people understand.
Iran isn't actually a nation of pure evil, they are looking out for their own interests and on any given Sunday, are not particularly interested in starting a nuclear conflict. At the same time, understandably, their adversaries are not particularly interested in them having that option.
The risk is when they are backed into a corner where using a nuclear weapon increasingly makes sense. In this case, if you bomb Fordow and can completely eradicate the nuclear weapons, you do eliminate the immediate nuclear risk (though not without creating a slew of new problems to deal with). But, if you fail you have now backed them into a corner where this might become an increasingly reasonable option.
Either way the events of today are very likely to unfold in ways that forever change not only the dynamics of the middle east but global politics as a whole.
Ancapistani 19 hours ago [-]
This is a great comment IMO :)
> Iran isn't actually a nation of pure evil, they are looking out for their own interests
Exactly. I do my best to consider them an "adversary", not an "enemy" for just that reason.
> The risk is when they are backed into a corner where using a nuclear weapon increasingly makes sense.
I'd argue there are two risks: one is that this puts Iran in a position where, if the regime survives, they will feel (and rightfully so) that the only way to secure their position is to possess them.
It also makes the same statement to other countries in similar positions.
I don't think we have a better option, sadly, but it is a consequence of this action.
Also, I don't think this makes a rational case for use. For possession, yes. For threatening to use them under certain conditions, yes - but the only rational use case for deploying nuclear weapons is if your opponent has already done the same. This became the case when the thermonuclear bomb was invented.
K0balt 18 hours ago [-]
Ukraine, and now Iran, have made one thing abundantly clear to the world: if you want to have any actual sovereignty on the world stage, you must have nuclear weapons. Otherwise you are merely waiting for another nation to find an excuse to violate your borders.
Every country in the world with well organized military is right now working on plans to acquire a nuclear arsenal either by proxy or by way of a domestic nuclear program. That is the legacy of this strike. It puts the point at the end of the exclamation that was Ukraine.
The seeds of a new era of proliferation have been sown, and our children will reap the rewards.
There are now ways to purify uranium much more cost effectively and in better secrecy that centrifuges. Small labs can do it effectively now, and a massively distributed effort would not only make it possible to achieve without needing to buy restricted equipment, it also would make it nearly impossible to disrupt militarily.
You could just open source a design and let the market do the work. It’s of course a terrible idea, which would lead to explosive proliferation and lots of cancer, but it would work. The technical part is challenging but not outside of the reach of serious hobby level efforts.
I will be surprised if we don’t start to see something along these lines cropping up all over the place soon. It’s a natural progression of several technologies that have become vastly more economical and accessible as time goes on.
jopsen 7 hours ago [-]
> Every country in the world with well organized military is right now working on plans to acquire a nuclear arsenal..
Maybe, but the US and Israel also just demonstrated that Russian air defense assets (as employed in Iran) can be worthless.
The conflict does make me think the F35 might not be that bad. Granted who knows how Israel got air superiority?
simonh 18 hours ago [-]
The main problem is the Iranian regime's view that it is their religious duty to destroy the state of Israel. This is why they supply weapons to Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, and anyone who will attack Israel, and incite them to do so.
They will not stop, and they can't be negotiated with on this, again because they see it as a religious duty.
samrus 11 hours ago [-]
i think this line of reasoning is just falling for both iran's and america's propaganda
they use theology for political mandate and to further their goals. their goals are fundamentally opposed to israel's existence and go against america's interests in the region but they are geopolitical goals wrapped in theological wrapping paper, not mad ravings. no more than israel's "promised land" and america's "christian duty" are
this dehumanization is only going to lead to US boots on the ground and iran becoming an even worse vietnam/afghanistan. the US needs to bring iran down like the soviets were brought down; from the inside. this invading and sabre rattling hasnt worked before and wont work now
disgruntledphd2 10 hours ago [-]
Ok if this is a problem, then surely the ministers in the Israeli government are equally problematic given that they want to annex Gaza and the West Bank?
If you disagree can you help me understand the difference between these issues?
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
> It also makes the same statement to other countries in similar positions.
We've already seen that with North Korea and Libya. NK got to having them before we could stop them. Libya gave up its nuclear program (which is how we learned about Iran's), and we staged a revolution there and regime change.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
“ the regime survives, they will feel (and rightfully so) that the only way to secure their position is to possess them”
Which is why they likely were trying to possess them before and the US and Israel felt the need to strike
rexer 18 hours ago [-]
Do you think Iran will have nukes in the near (20 years, just to put a number) term? Your position really only makes sense if that's not the case. By whatever means, the goal now seems to be to prevent that.
> I don't think we have a better option
I'd love help getting on board with this
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
> Do you think Iran will have nukes in the near (20 years, just to put a number) term?
If they managed to get enough of their HEU and any reactor spent fuel out of Fordo and elsewhere into locations we don't know about where they happen to have previously built backup facilities then they could have them very quickly. Hopefully a) they didn't build backup facilities, and b) didn't get a change to spirit away the materials w/o us noticing.
If commercial satellite photography can keep an eye on the movement of trucks in this area, it's probably safe to assume that spy satellites can too.
tonyhart7 18 hours ago [-]
I mean 20 years ago, mossad literally destroy their nuclear program using Stuxnet
20 years is reasonable time to rebuild
Ancapistani 18 hours ago [-]
The plan we've committed to now is to prevent it.
If we fail, there's still the hope that other commenters here are right, and Iran isn't intent on using them offensively. If so, then Iran itself will be safe from this sort of attack.
... but it will also be clear to every other that the only way to be secure from Western military intervention is to possess nuclear weapons. There will be a precedent of a country acquiring them despite Western demands and surviving. This will lead to a world where proliferation is rampant, but not necessarily one where their use is no longer taboo as it is today.
seadan83 18 hours ago [-]
> There will be a precedent of a country acquiring them despite Western demands and surviving.
Like North Korea?
Ancapistani 16 hours ago [-]
Correct.
And like Ukraine (conversely).
z2 18 hours ago [-]
In the region, it feels like Saudi Arabia and Turkey are going to be watching this very closely closely.
Ancapistani 18 hours ago [-]
KSA has been slowly coming around for the past decade or so. Trump's recent visit -- domestic optics aside -- confirmed and strengthened that.
Turkey/Türkiye has been going the other direction. They're not totally off the reservation, but Erdogan isn't exactly in NATO's inner circle personally.
lostlogin 18 hours ago [-]
Is there a good write up somewhere on what a nuclear Iran would mean?
I don’t wish for more nuclear weapons, but to date, the states with them, usually (a nice apply word) don’t use them.
chasd00 3 hours ago [-]
I think it would mean nuclear weapons in the hands of Hamas, hezbollah and other organizations who could use them without a state/regime to blame. Iran could say “it wasn’t us, you can’t prove anything” meanwhile city after city in Israel is destroyed. Further, any action to destroy Iran’s stockpile would be met with a nuclear response and the claim of self defense.
bentobean 5 hours ago [-]
> It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region. — Ali Khamenei
Does that sound like someone who should have a nuclear arsenal?
lostlogin 4 hours ago [-]
I agree. But also, are the words and actions of Russia, China, North Korea, Israel and the US (and the rest of the nuclear club) the sort you think ideal?
That the US decides who can have them is darkly hilariously.
bentobean 13 minutes ago [-]
Is the US perfect? Of course not. But considering the alternatives, yes - I am glad the US can serve as the arbiter.
Invictus0 8 hours ago [-]
This thinking is a perfect example of being too clever by half. North Korea has nukes now because very smart people were paralyzed by just this sort of abstract risk-calculation thought exercises.
tus666 19 hours ago [-]
260ft is around 79m. The bombs can penetrate around 60m of concrete. So one bomb, probably not, but they are able to follow each other in quick succession meaning 2 or three should be able to do the job quite easily, with accurate GPS positioning.
missedthecue 17 hours ago [-]
They can penetrate 60m of soil. They cannot penetrate 60m of concrete. Reinforced concrete at about 5000psi would only get penetration of 8-15m.
The facility is beneath 80m of limestone which in the Qom formation is roughly equivalent to about 5000psi concrete.
Beneath the limestone, sits the facility itself which is encased in high performance concrete. So these bombs need to pen 80m of 5000psi material and then a unknown depth of high performance concrete.
reissbaker 16 hours ago [-]
There is no public information about what kind of material 60m refers to, and the best guesses of reinforced concrete are 18m. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP While a single bomb would be insufficient, you don't need that many to get to 80m.
And US military assets are often much more powerful than publicly advertised...
missedthecue 16 hours ago [-]
A bomb penetrating 18m of reinforced concrete doesn't excavate 18m of concrete. It would weaken it by some percentage through fractures and overpressure but you'll need to pen it again with the second bomb.
dontTREATonme 15 hours ago [-]
They dropped six.
kcplate 7 hours ago [-]
According to the pentagon briefing this morning they dropped 14. News is reporting that it was in 3 specific locations and they were dropped successively. Assuming most detonated successfully, that much specialized ordinance did some damage. This bomb was specifically designed for this very purpose and you have to realize that capabilities that are reported are probably pretty conservative vs what the bomb is actually capable of doing.
I know a bunch of armchair generals on here are speculating that this was ineffective, but time will tell.
trogdor 6 hours ago [-]
> you have to realize that capabilities that are reported are probably pretty conservative vs what the bomb is actually capable of doing
Why do you believe that to be true?
kcplate 5 hours ago [-]
Because it’s always the case with the US military equipment capabilities that full capability is never disclosed. What possible reason would the military have in divulging actual specs?
Military: We can penetrate up to 200 feet with this new bunker buster bomb that we spent a billion dollars on…specifically for this site and some sites in North Korea.
Enemy: Build the bunker at 300 feet, I hear their best bunker buster is only effective to 200 feet.
Military: Damn, foiled again!
saberience 8 hours ago [-]
Six spread across three sites, two on each site. I highly doubt the deepest site is out of commission.
14 hours ago [-]
jen729w 18 hours ago [-]
Also, surely – I have no expertise – but you don't need to totally destroy the bunker to render the operation basically dead, right?
The land, roads, ingress points, elevators, security, everything around here is now FUBAR. Okay so you didn't "destroy the bunker", but how many years until it's functional again?
400thecat 16 hours ago [-]
you don't actually need to completely destroy all the underground levels in Fordow. It is enough to cause enough damage so that the stored uranium contaminates the site, while being sealed from the outside world under the collapsed site.
adastra22 14 hours ago [-]
There is uranium stored there. It was moved out weeks ago.
There were an estimated twenty of these bombs in existence before the bombing; very little head room for throwing more of them down the hole if they haven't done the job.
sdenton4 17 hours ago [-]
The bombs don't dig a hole, removing all matter for the next bomb to dig its way deeper...
jandrewrogers 17 hours ago [-]
The point is not to dig a hole. Penetration depth is a function of compression strength of the medium. Every bomb leaves a path of debris in its wake with negligible compression strength that subsequent bombs can pass through before expending their energy.
missedthecue 17 hours ago [-]
But they compact the material beneath the explosion.
jandrewrogers 16 hours ago [-]
That does not materially add to compression strength.
shmoe 19 hours ago [-]
ahh.. in my mind it was multiple hits spread over an area. This does make more sense.
You wouldn't expect significant radiological contamination from bombing an HEU facility deep underground? This isn't like exposed reactor core material.
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
They do have reactors though, do they not? Hitting the spent fuel pools and/or the reactors would produce detectable radioactive contamination. The HEU? Not so much as its half-life is 700 million years, and the stuff is dense and will quickly settle down.
adastra22 14 hours ago [-]
Why would they have reactors? This is uranium enrichment, not plutonium production.
cryptonector 7 hours ago [-]
Why would they not have reactors? Plutonium bombs are more efficient than uranium bombs, so of course they should want to make some plutonium. Remember, they claim they need HEU for civilian reactors.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
There are limited ways to destroy Fordow. US is only country to possess them
siltcakes 19 hours ago [-]
This bombing was for show. The US did not use the required munitions to destroy these targets. Not even close.
margalabargala 18 hours ago [-]
They dropped 12 of the GBU-57s. What would you recommend?
sebmellen 18 hours ago [-]
12 of those bunker busters in succession? High chance the facilities really were destroyed.
jandrewrogers 18 hours ago [-]
That does not follow. It is not like it is an active reactor. There is no reason there should be significant radiological contamination.
simonh 18 hours ago [-]
The facility enriches Uranium hexafluoride gas.
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
With a half-life between 700 million years (for U-235) and 4 billion years (for U-238). And it's dense stuff that will immediately settle on the ground. You're not going to detect it from afar.
18 hours ago [-]
arandomusername 22 hours ago [-]
What does "unauthorized" mean here? Who needs to authorize weapons-grade uranium enrichment?
The GBU-57 is dope. Really curious to see how well it worked here
nradov 22 hours ago [-]
Unauthorized in the sense of a violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory. Whether Iran is actually violating the treaty is a matter of some dispute.
It's literally an anvil they drop out of the sky hoping to punch through structures like an aerial drilling platform. I guess it's dope, but it seems like cartoon armament to me.
trhway 21 hours ago [-]
> I guess it's dope, but it seems like cartoon armament to me.
"According to an anecdote, the idea arose after a group of Royal Navy officers saw a similar, but fictional, bomb depicted in the 1943 Walt Disney animated propaganda film Victory Through Air Power,[Note 10] and the name Disney was consequently given to the weapon."
cwmoore 21 hours ago [-]
Curious too. I can’t even imagine driving a 16ton nail through hundreds of feet of hard rock and reinforced concrete.
missedthecue 17 hours ago [-]
Not physically possible. You can get through hundreds of feet of loosely compacted soil and gravel but high performance concrete? 8-15m max.
If they built the facility out of 30,000psi concrete, they'd be lucky to pen 4 meters with a direct hit, nevermind the 80m of limestone above it.
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
It's a shame we got rid of the deal that brought their domestic uranium production to a halt [0]. Trump fucked this all up so badly.
The relief of sanctions enabled Iran to fund their other activities in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. It also enable the regime to invest in other weapons programs including weapons Iran has been supplying to Russia and those it and its proxies are launching against Israel.
I'm not sure Trump withdrawal from that deal was the best idea but the deal wasn't great either.
8note 4 hours ago [-]
i think its "the core issue to who?"
The core issue to the most of the world is nuclear proliferation, not low level terrorism and militia groups.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
The deal did address – quite precisely and successfully – the core issue. It didn't address some other side issues.
"The thing that prevented them from achieving a nuclear weapon didn't also prevent them from funding x y z other far less problematic things that can be far more easily handled through conventional diplomacy and military action"
Seriously?
dralley 19 hours ago [-]
I mean, this strike doesn't really address the core issue either. The core issue being Iran being a fundamentalist regime.
grafmax 3 hours ago [-]
Being attacked by a genocidal regime and the country paying for the genocide. Appealing to a moral high ground in this conflict is pretty ridiculous.
alkonaut 14 hours ago [-]
There are 3 lead characters in this tragedy of a play. And what they have in common is that all 3 try to cling to power because the alternative is prison (at best).
Meekro 11 hours ago [-]
If Netanyahu stepped down tomorrow, apparently the most likely successor would be Israel Katz. He would maintain basically the same foreign policy.
disgruntledphd2 10 hours ago [-]
But his corruption trial would go ahead. Lots of recent Israeli government decisions appear to be best understood through this lens.
It's unsurprising but very, very depressing.
thimabi 8 hours ago [-]
In this specific case of the Iranian nuclear program, I believe the highly-enriched uranium weights more in the balance than any other domestic reason for Netanyahu to act. There’s no way any Israeli government will willingly let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
weatherlite 19 hours ago [-]
> I think Netanyahu belongs in prison
We're working on it, 10-20 more years of legal proceedings and it's done.
__MatrixMan__ 19 hours ago [-]
I know 30,000 lbs is a lot, but I'm still surprised that terminal velocity is fast enough for it to penetrate concrete as deeply as they say it can.
hansvm 18 hours ago [-]
I'm a little surprised too. Even at the speed of sound in granite (6km/s) where you can start to consider crater-forming dynamics you only get an impact depth of 200ft. Treating it as a Newtonian impactor you get a depth of 60ft. I'd wager the cone shape pushing material to the side is hugely important to the outcome.
StochasticLi 13 hours ago [-]
The GBU-57 is dropped from a high-altitude B-2 Spirit bomber, which can fly at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet. This high drop altitude is crucial for the bomb to reach a very high terminal velocity. Some sources suggest it reaches supersonic speeds, potentially around Mach 1.29 (approximately 440 m/s).
Let's conservatively assume a terminal velocity (v) of 400 m/s (approximately 895 mph).
Calculating Kinetic Energy (KE):
The formula for kinetic energy is:
KE = 0.5 * m * v²
Plugging in our values:
KE = 0.5 * 13,600 kg * (400 m/s)²
KE = 0.5 * 13,600 kg * 160,000 m²/s²
KE ≈ 1.088 billion Joules
This is an enormous amount of energy that must be absorbed by the ground to stop the bomb.
---
Resistive Force of Soil (60m penetration estimation):
To simplify, we can use empirical formulas developed from extensive testing. One of the most well-known is Young's empirical formula, which provides a way to estimate penetration depth based on the projectile's characteristics and the soil's properties.
resistive force is as a pressure (force per unit area) acting on the front of the MOP. Let's call this the dynamic soil resistance. The total resistive force (F) would be this pressure multiplied by the cross-sectional area (A) of the bomb.
The cross-sectional area of the MOP (with a diameter of 0.8 m) is
A = π * (radius)² = π * (0.4 m)² ≈ 0.5 m²
---
Calculating Penetration Depth (d):
The work done (W) by the soil to stop the bomb is:
W = F * d
Setting the initial kinetic energy equal to the work done:
KE = F * d
Therefore, the penetration depth is:
d = KE / F
To achieve a 60-meter penetration, the average resistive force would have to be:
F = 1,088,000,000 J / 60 m
F ≈ 18,133,333 Newtons
This is equivalent to a force of over 4 million pounds. While this seems immense, it's plausible given the energies involved.
---
Now, we can calculate the resistive force:
Convert PSI to Pascals (Newtons per square meter):
15,000 psi(assuming) × 6,895 Pa/psi ≈ 103.4 Million Pascals (MPa)
Calculate the MOP's Cross-Sectional Area:
Diameter = 31.5 inches (0.8 meters)
Radius = 0.4 meters
Area (A) = π × (radius)² = π × (0.4 m)² ≈ 0.503 m²
Calculate the Total Resistive Force (F):
Force = Pressure × Area
F = 103,400,000 N/m² × 0.503 m²
F ≈ 52 Million Newtons
So we see that 18 Million Newtons is not enough and the bomb would have to be significantly supersonic, or my calculations are too conservative, or they are overestimating the 60m soil penetration, but we ARE in the same ballpark.
---
now, you might ask how can an object achieve over 1 Mach terminal velocity?
At high altitudes (like 30,000-50,000 feet): The air is much colder and less dense. For instance, at 35,000 feet, the temperature can be around -54°C, and the speed of sound drops to about 295 m/s (about 660 mph).
In this high-altitude, low-density environment, the MOP's terminal velocity is incredibly high. It can easily accelerate past the local speed of sound (which is already lower due to the cold) and go supersonic, then slowing down when near ground.
The bomb is also likely designed like a super aerodynamic dart to achieve maximum terminal velocity.
__MatrixMan__ 7 hours ago [-]
Thanks for showing your work, I guess my intuition just doesn't involve objects of this size often enough to be accurate.
It does seem like we're nearing the limit of what can be done with aircraft though. The challenge of hitting the ground much harder seems to be greater than just digging your facility a little deeper (that said, I've nevler dug a hole that deep either so perhaps I'm wrong about that also).
belter 5 hours ago [-]
Your calculations are wrong, since the strength of the rock is more like granite or concrete.
MrSkelter 3 hours ago [-]
FYI every credible expert agrees that Iran aren’t making bombs yet. They are enriching to 60%. Far from what’s needed for a weapon. They have been capable of making bombs for decades and have chosen not to. They even adhered to the JCPOA when Trump tire it up.
It’s odd to have a country that illegally proliferated treating a neighbor who isn’t doing that yet as the greatest threat to world piece. Backed by the only country that’s used nuclear weapons in anger.
It’s very possible that in a decade the Us will be at war in Iran. Trump and Netanyahu will be off the world stage. The cost to the US will be thousands of lives and several trillion and China will have taken Taiwan while we aren’t capable of stopping them.
These wars always seem to start well because destroying things is the easy but.
We don’t know if we’ve done much damage to the buried facilities. Bunker busters don’t dive very deep, they can be deflected via engineering, and concrete is cheap.
Conflict like this are what will definitively end “The American Century” and we are currently witnessing that.
You cannot bomb your way to peaceful coexistence.
reaperducer 3 hours ago [-]
They are enriching to 60%. Far from what’s needed for a weapon.
The ones used for this operation go 197 feet, including 25 solid feet of high-strength concrete, with just one bomb. The idea is to use multiple bombs trailing one another to achieve extra depth. It's too soon yet to tell if that worked, or not.
faramarz 18 hours ago [-]
The factual's don't matter in Politics, not when mad men are at the helm. Funny how Trump closed his address with thanking god, and the Iranians start theirs in the name of god. So different, yet the same.
The US posturing against Iran dates back to the Cold War era when Iran was tagged as “northern tier” state, and any nationalist moves inside looked like a Soviet opening, and a threat to the Anglo stronghold of Iran's Oil.
asadm 16 hours ago [-]
strangely, all parties involved believe in SAME God.
vlod 5 hours ago [-]
>They should have shaped it like a giant piano.
I immediately thought about Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.... wasted youth
didntknowyou 3 hours ago [-]
unathorized? they have let more nuclear inspectors into their country than israel. just because you don't agree with them having something doesn't mean you can bomb them.
Gonna need a source for that whole "weapons-grade uranium" claim, otherwise you sound like the New York Times for the last 30 years.
It's also very likely, and so far an exact figure is yet to be reported, that several smart, kind, and non-hostile scientists working towards a clean energy program were killed by this strike.
Celebrating death for the sake of a hypothetical is a very dangerous attitude, and is frankly repugnant to see as a top comment.
tptacek 2 hours ago [-]
Could you maybe sync up with this person and hash this all out and come back to me with what it is I believe? Thanks!
This seems like a tacit admittance of failing to have evidence for your claim of weapons-grade enriched uranium.
Work through the cognitive dissonance; it’ll be okay.
belter 6 hours ago [-]
The US Airforce specs for the GBU-57, and the independent assessment from Jane's are that is able to penetrate about 60 m (200 ft) of earth or 18 m of concrete.
Fordow sits beneath a thick cap on a limestone–dolomite mountain, whose compressive strength rivals granite, and the facility is at least at 90 to 100 meters. If a warhead detonates the carbonate stack fractures and absorbs the pressure wave, calcite dissociation soaks up heat, keeping the cavern wall below all braking thresholds and leaving the target probably intact.
Thinking that doing something like that will stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is naive. It's not a technical challenge for them, it's a political decision, only a political decision. If they really wanted to, they would already have it. Enriched material was transported from these centers some time ago, as news outlets have already reported.
As for the facts, and not just the narrative: 60% enrichment is not considered weapons-grade enrichment, and it is not illegal under the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Therefore, today's attack is an illegal act of aggression against another country, violating international law. Those are the facts.
r0m4n0 19 hours ago [-]
Just curious where the enrichment fact you are claiming comes from. I see the NPT outlined 3% max while watchdogs detected over 80%. I didn’t think there were debates about them breaking the NPT
I am not sure how its only a political decision when they don't have control of their own airspace. How exactly do they rebuild when as soon as they start they get bombed. I think its more accurate to say it WAS a political decision. They had the capability but did not pursue it due to the fallout of doing so. The question its do they still retain the capability and will they ever be allowed to reclaim that capability if they lost it.
energy123 19 hours ago [-]
> Enriched material was transported from these centers some time ago, as news outlets have already reported.
That's what Iran state media says. Has anyone else said this?
QuadmasterXLII 11 hours ago [-]
It's close to unknowable. The entire 500 kg stash of highly enriched uranium that we're fighting this war over has a volume of about 20 liters- not easy to track. Bombing the uranium doesn't unenriched it either unless you do something like drop an equal mass of depleted uranium and then hit it with enough explosives to thoroughly mix the two
seadan83 16 hours ago [-]
I would like to see the confirmation as well. At the same time, it does sound plausible. Why keep the highly enriched uranium at the centrifuge site after you're done doing all the centrifuging.
energy123 15 hours ago [-]
The challenge for Israel is there's always a small chance your intelligence has a blind spot or is wrong. You can't prove a negative.
This is why I think the most likely scenario is that Israel will commit to regime change. Israel can't trust the current regime to not race to a nuclear weapon at this stage, and Israel can never be over 99% certain that a clandestine effort isn't being done outside of the current understanding of intelligence. "Assume the worst" seems to be a doctrine they adhere to.
disgruntledphd2 10 hours ago [-]
And honestly I'm ok with Israel attempting to force regime change. I think they'll fail but whatevs.
The problem is that the US government appear to support them in whatever craziness they aim for. That's the part that makes this a lot more problematic.
swat535 8 hours ago [-]
Regime change in Iran is not going to happen under duress, if anything, this will unite Iranians to defend their homes.
energy123 8 hours ago [-]
There was regime change against the Russian Tsar in response to his failures in WW1. The rally around the flag didn't count for anything. If the weakness and failures of Khamenei becomes a reality strong enough to pierce through the perceptions shaped by state run media then I am putting my money on regime change. Maybe not right now but soon.
Happened with Japan in WW2, too, although that was a surrender rather than bottom up. But still a form of regime change. There are many ways it could play out.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
60% can be weaponized and it’s not a huge leap to go to 90%
akdev1l 19 hours ago [-]
> If they really wanted to, they would already have it. Enriched material was transported from these centers some time ago.
…
> 60% enrichment is not considered weapons-grade enrichment.
So which is it?
1. They already have enriched uranium and can just make a bomb now
2. They don’t have weapons-grade enriched uranium (and now probably cannot enrich it)
gmueckl 19 hours ago [-]
3. (Speculation) They know how to enrich further, but deliberately didn't.
margalabargala 18 hours ago [-]
That's just (2).
Whether they had the theoretical ability to complete enrichment or not last week, does not matter, because they likely do not have it now.
mieses 19 hours ago [-]
There isn't anything special about Iran. It's anyone's political decision to use a nuke. So you make diplomatic decisions, war inclusive, to increase chances that you will not be nuked.
19 hours ago [-]
yongjik 22 hours ago [-]
> dug into the side of a mountain hours outside of population centers
Did you have to add that qualifier because otherwise there's at least one other nuclear power in Middle East that regularly bombs civilians.
Sorry, but this is a hopelessly naive take. They were undoubtedly content to abide by the terms of the JCPOA, but they have also done significantly more than would be required for a purely civilian nuclear program, notwithstanding their prolific ballistic missile program.
fisherjeff 17 hours ago [-]
All obviously true, but what I don’t understand is how anyone could possibly believe that this strike could push Iran toward signing and abiding by the terms of an agreement more stringent than JCPOA. I’d be very happy to be wrong but it’s hard for me to see how this isn’t a big step backward.
dlubarov 17 hours ago [-]
I don't think anyone believes that, it's just a matter of giving up on a diplomatic solution and resorting to the use of force. It might only be a short-term solution, but it is what it is.
recroad 6 hours ago [-]
Nice justification of illegal bombing. On point with Western values and racist attitudes.
Tika2234 18 hours ago [-]
There is saying might is right. Since he is the new American president, that is might. So he is righteous. I dont think prisons fit a "righteous" person.
nivertech 12 hours ago [-]
I think that every person I dislike belongs in prison
These people don’t deserve fair trial
Source: Because I said so
—-
"Might makes right"
"The stronger always blames the weaker"
"My need of food is guilt enough of yours" ("Ты виноват уж тем, что хочется мне кушать")
That's an all around bad move for the US. Getting dragged into an Israeli war and probably having to carry the can for the next few years alone after getting into a mess not of our own making (well directly anyway).
This is going to hit gas prices, the markets and US security considerations all in order to help keep the current Israeli leadership out of Israeli prisons. Bad move.
zild3d 12 hours ago [-]
> the US. Getting dragged into an Israeli war
A lot of people saying this, what would this actually entail? My money is much more on this being a "1 and done" exchange. Iran poses very little threat now, launchers being taken out everyday, leadership chain wiped out, seemingly no other Iran allies getting pulled into the fold
mjburgess 10 hours ago [-]
Iran has a population of 92mil and an economy vastly stronger than iraq 2003 -- it also has extremely motivated backers in China, who are eagar to use it the way the US uses Ukraine: a means to deplete a peer competitor of their military resources. The best outcome for China here is the US blowing its assets in Iran.
The propaganda at the moment is israel is winning, iran isnt using missiles because of "air superiority", and the US is able and willing to detroy the nuclear capacity via the air. All of these claims are false. Iran's capacity to strike back remains vast using only its own resources.
What the US has been dragged into by israel is an amazing opportunity for a US peer competitor (china) to grind down its arms -- it would be remarkable if China doesn't take it. It can hardly afford the US to be a well-armed protector of Taiwan.
The iranian regieme's apparent hesitation at the moment is not as extreme as russia's on the first days of the ukraine war, and look at where we are now. This apparent hesitation is waiting for israel to deplete its missile defense, waiting for a more stable intelligence environment (presumably moving assets, etc. around out of uncovered israeli operations), and most of all, waiting for a moment to strike off-guard.
whynotminot 7 hours ago [-]
The bombs used were literally designed for Iran. They deplete no real capability that matters anywhere else the US is meaningfully engaged.
If the US had lost a B2 during the operation, then sure, that would be a major loss. But as far as I can tell we did not.
mjburgess 7 hours ago [-]
The ground invasion hasn't started yet, the US is supplying israel, and you can see my other comment.
whynotminot 7 hours ago [-]
We’re always supplying Israel. I think that cost is basically priced-in at this point.
If we get involved in a ground invasion, sure, that’s a different matter.
mjburgess 7 hours ago [-]
Even if its an israeli ground invasion only, that's still a massive arms injection --- at the same time the US is supplying a ground war in europe.
A ground war in europe, one in the middle east -- all of the US assets in distant seas, its bombs in distant lands. Pretty good time to be a china on tour.
whynotminot 7 hours ago [-]
Brother take a look at a map. Exactly how does Israel pull off a sustained ground invasion of Iran, even if the US committed to help?
Sure, maybe some targeted commando raids here and there. They’re already doing that.
Large scale invasion though? Almost logistically impossible unless you’re telling me the maps I’ve looked at my whole life are state propaganda too.
Procuring two landing craft means Israel has the capability to sustain a sea invasion of the scale required to subdue a 92 million population? It would require something like a modern day Normandy to pull this off.
This is not a serious suggestion.
mjburgess 7 hours ago [-]
Yip, so it would require US support.
As far as I can tell, israel is doing everything it can to escalate the situation to a place where the US is forced into it. We'll have to see if it can be avoided.
The problem for iran is that while they may believe the US is unwilling to escalate, and so be happier to go "arms down" -- they won't be allowed to by israel. So they're being forced up the escalation ladder.
There are very many things that they can do which would destabilise US military and economic interests directly. One imagines israel will do everything i can to provoke such a response.
JoRyGu 6 hours ago [-]
You have literally worked yourself up into hysteria if you think Israel is in any position to invade Iran, even with US support.
mjburgess 5 hours ago [-]
What do you mean by "in a position"? Do i think it would be successful? of course not, that's mad.
Do I think israel is inclined to try, or otherwise, risk failure on the back of US blood and treasure? More or less, yes -- i think that's quite likely.
The US invasion and occupation of vietnam, afganistan, iraq, etc. were all mad. The US foreign policy elite are not very competent because america doesnt receive any real blowback from its failures -- so there's no conditioning mechanism to force it into instutitonal competence.
Do I think such an elite would do one more stupid thing? yes, its actually far more improbable that they'd learn caution
They've bankrupted america, caused half the world to turn against them -- all the while presiding over the rise and enrichment of a peer competitor (china). You could not describe a more incompent, warmongering, self-destructive set of foreign policy institutions.
It's what happens when you are isolated on your own continent and rarely have to pay for your decisions.
bigyabai 5 hours ago [-]
Operations are defined by goals. If you want to invade or launch a special forces op into your enemy territory, you need a small and attainable goal. Not "eliminate all nuclear threats" but more like "clear this area of nuclear materiel" in any areas you consider suspect. Otherwise you end up deploying troops that never come home.
Israel's state government is absolutely filled to the brim with war hawks - but they're not stupid. The situation they want to contain is too large to fix with IDF ground forces, they necessarily have to involve US force structures to seriously challenge Iran. And even then, it feels likely that we'd be looking at an Afghan War situation where guerrilla combat absolutely shreds the modern forces the further they push in.
mjburgess 5 hours ago [-]
"they're not that stupid" has not been a good predictive theory of western foreign policy since the victorian era
bigyabai 52 minutes ago [-]
Look, I don't want to get pissy because your track-record in this comment chain is mostly on-point. Boots are about to deploy on Iranian soil, and it's going to be a deliberate bloodbath for the first few days. Israel is going to piss and moan until America sends over more assets and materiel, at which point we'll be firmly in WWIII territory. It's downright bad, and you're not at all hyperbolic to lay things out like this.
...but I will repeat myself - this is an attack of opportunity for Israel, not a desperate scramble to destroy nuclear assets. Israel's long-term goal is to become the unquestioned geopolitical power of the Levant, even outside America's auspices. They can do that by leveraging the dumb-as-a-brick administration to provoke Iran into a response, at which point they will fight until attrition forces them both to retreat. Now Israeli forces are the de-facto security guarantor in the region, and we already know they draw their borders however they like.
Mind you, this isn't the last you'll hear about "Iran's nuclear program" - it hasn't outlived it's usefulness, quite yet. Israel will continue targeting them not until nuclear assets are destroyed, but until America perceives itself to be backed into a corner with no choice but to search Iran door-to-door for a hidden bomb. (Stretch Goal - +100 Brownie Points: get America to launch a tactical nuclear weapon on Iran and increase the escalation ladder beyond what any peer power can compete with.)
tome 6 hours ago [-]
And if a ground invasion doesn't happen will you agree to never to speculate on the subject again?
mjburgess 5 hours ago [-]
No, nor have I said a ground invasion will happen. It's also an inherently ridiculous thing to say -- if I am wrong about highly complex geostrategic outcomes then i should never think about them again? By that logic, the entire US foreign policy establishment would likewise have to suspend its activities.
In any case, I'm talking about inferred goals, capacity, strategy. I'm constructing a viable theory of what their strategy would be if they achieved their aims.
The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air. It might be that israel is content to lose on these objectives, and so be it.
I expected that most of my comments here would be heavily downvoted, and its somewhat suprising that they arent. Most people are operating from a profoundly heavily propagandized view of foreign policy, and of their own countries -- and whenever one raises thinking about these issues in ways which suspend this propaganda one gets a very angry reaction: everyone one is a nationalist, either midly or extermely, but a nationalist never the less. Asking people to thinking critically about their nation is tantamount to asking them to thinking critically about their mother.
Either way, I comment regardless for the few who are able to think clearly on these matters.
kybernetikos 2 hours ago [-]
> The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air. It might be that israel is content to lose on these objectives, and so be it.
This is key. The only way for this set of actions to go well is if there is regime change, otherwise the most likely outcome is that Iran's resolve to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible has been dramatically solidified.
Like you though, I struggle to see any clear path for positive regime change to occur. The nearest attempt would be boots (but whose?) on the ground, but even that seems unlikely to work out well. Maybe there could be some sort of internal resistance, but I don't see how they could operate successfully while the country is under external attack.
My assumption with how things are at the moment is that the actions by Israel and the USA have all but guaranteed that Iran acquires a nuclear weapon in the next few decades, and so have dramatically increased the risk of Israel being attacked with one. One has to assume that radical Islamist terrorism in western countries will increase too.
tome 5 hours ago [-]
> No, nor have I said a ground invasion will happen
Oof, OK, I suppose not, you only said "The [my emphasis] ground invasion hasn't started yet". There is some degree of ambiguity there. Forgive me for thinking you were saying one will happen.
> The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air.
Ah! Is that a prediction you insist will happen? That there will be no regime change and no end to Iran's military nuclear programme without a ground invasion? Great! That's a testable hypothesis. Let's see.
> It's also an inherently ridiculous thing to say -- if I am wrong about highly complex geostrategic outcomes then i should never think about them again?
No, not at all (and I certainly didn't say "think", I said "speculate"). It's just a way of seeing if you put your money where your mouth is. If there is an incentive to someone predicting wrongly I'm more likely to take them seriously!
mjburgess 5 hours ago [-]
P(neither of those aims being achieved from the air|current strategy) = 90%
if either were, this would be the first instnace in history -- so, presumably, i could be forgiven for the mistake
but either way, I dont think israel believes they can be either
foobarian 9 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the regime is holding back so as to not piss off the remaining JCPOA signatories. They only have until October [1], and after that it's not clear if they can agree on a renewed set of sanctions.
China buys all their oil so not sure how much the sanctions are a problem
Invictus0 8 hours ago [-]
We dropped a dozen highly specialized bombs in a single, closed-end operation, and you're arguing that this meaningfully depleted the USAF magazine enough to move the needle on a conflict in Taiwan?
mjburgess 8 hours ago [-]
I'd be arguing first that the operation failed, and has made no meaningful impact on the mountain and esp. the nuclear facilities over 100m under granite.
Generous estimates place relevant bomb capacity in the US at 100, though I believe only ~1/3 of that is confirmed. Reports say ~10 were used. So, speculatively, the US has used 25% of its capacity to bust deep fortifications -- and, imv, failed to make a dent.
Credible estimates I'm aware of talk about dozens of bombs (per similar deep fortification), seriously depleting US capacity. It's unlikely the US would be willing to use up more than 50% of its bombing capacity here -- since a very large number of bombs are required for deep fortifications of this kind.
ie., US capacity is about "destroying two mountains", and it really needs at least to retain capacity to destroy one.
A well-designed nuke could take out the mountain, that's really the best air-supplied shot at taking the thing out.
Either way, none of this can be confirmed without ground forces. So one wonders if at least some of this theatre is to provoke iran enough to react in a way that justifies a ground invasion.
To your point, yes, china would absolutely love the US to degrade as much capacity as it possibly can. One images, even, they'd spin up a nuclear programme in iran very quickly again, just to try to drag the US back in. The US has done much worse.
China's geostrategic goal at the moment is stamp on the rope-pins around the US elephant: ukraine, iran, israel, and so on. Have the US blow as much as possible of its rapidly depleting military arsenal everywhere but around china.
Trump was the first president to really take this problem seriously, it's a little unfortunate that he's found himself in the same trap as every US president for the last 25 years.
8 hours ago [-]
bamboozled 9 hours ago [-]
The propaganda
What propaganda ? I’ve seen the footage of Iran firing flak cannons somewhere in the direction of f35s. Not a single Israeli plane has been lost…where is the lie ?
Iran has a population of 92mil and an economy vastly stronger than iraq 2003* why assume they want the current leadership to remain in charge? Why assume they wanted nukes ?
You mention China grinding down its enemy ? What about the fact the air force is actually performing real missions being and gaining real experience ? Is a few bunker busters going to grind down the USAF ?
mjburgess 9 hours ago [-]
Neither you or I, and esp. not the media, have any access to facts on the ground. All photographs or videos you have seen have been placed there for you to see them.
All we can work backwards from are the most reliable facts we have before the war, about capabilities on the ground. We know the rough size of the iranian missile programme, of the country, economic, various military assets and similar.
We can work backwards from this to ask, "what would we be able to see had Israel achieved its claim re iran" -- and we're talking extraordinary levels of destruction in iran, across the country, and so on. We don't have any evidence of operations of that scale even taking place, let alone having been successful.
It is most likely, at the moment, that at least some alleged air force victories by israel are actual missiles they've issued from neighbouring states on the land.
However, either way, all of this is speculation. What can be stated with near certainty is that any picture presented in the media is an extremely careful creation of the propaganda arms of our states, and not a credible military briefing.
Our only access to reliable inferences is purely rational and hypothetical: what are X's aims, what are their claims, what are they claimed strategies, what are their capabilities and so on.. and then what would we see *if*...
potholereseller 2 hours ago [-]
> All photographs or videos you have seen have been placed there for you to see them.
For those reading the above, wondering about this phenomenon, read Baudrilliard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Even if you don't agree with Baudrilliard's overall thesis, the facts he brings up are still cogent (e.g. a photo from the Exon Valdez spill was used instead of an actual photo of the Iraqi military's destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields). The media has been a critical aspect of war since at least the Falklands War.
bamboozled 2 hours ago [-]
I am talking about open source and community driven footage and intel. Not CNN or Fox ?
pliny 8 hours ago [-]
>All photographs or videos you have seen have been placed there for you to see them
The source of most of the videos from both sides is random social media users.
Even the videos and info from the IDF I would regard as credible, since they released similar videos and info from the Lebanon operation last year that was consistently corroborated by evidence from social media (there was no internet blackout in Lebanon so every IDF strike on an urban area had multiple videos from different perspectives).
mjburgess 8 hours ago [-]
Social media users placed by iran's full missile defense systems? Social media users at the bottom of 100m of granite? Social media users amongst the iranian barracks?
I called the war for Russia ~2 years ago, just as the "counter offensive" by Ukraine was starting. Go back, if you wish, to that time in the news and find exactly what english-speaking western median, and social media, was saying.
What is the picture you get, of Ukraine and its counteroffensive, delivered to you from these sources?
It's always a little stunning just how easy it is for publics to be manipulated. Oh what a world.
bamboozled 1 hours ago [-]
You called the war for Russia? Did they win ?
Anyway why don’t we see videos from Iran of Israeli jets being shot down ? Why is there no footage of Irans airforce engaging Israel ? Why didn’t the B-2 spirits get attacked ? You can say it’s all lies and propaganda , but it’s not because there is no evidence to the contrary being presented.
whynotminot 7 hours ago [-]
I’m sorry in all this noise I’m failing to get to your point. Are you claiming that Iran is shooting down F-35s? Because that would be a pretty important piece of information that a lot of countries who have staked their Air Forces on the F-35 would like to know. It would also be a hard piece of information (damn near impossible) to keep under wraps, given the stakes, and the number of interested parties.
mjburgess 7 hours ago [-]
I'm claiming that the alleged air superiority is most likely partial and temporary.
I can make no specific claims as to any actions by any one involved in the conflict, if iran had shot down f35s presently, it'd be highly likely covered up by both sides. Iran to protect knowledge of its capability, and israel to ensure domestic morale is maintained.
Either way, that wasn't my claim.
geysersam 6 hours ago [-]
I think you make a good point about the facts being heavily skewed in the reporting on the attacks in Iran. But this seems very unlikely to me:
> Iran to protect knowledge of its capability
Protect knowledge against who? Israel will know if one of their planes were shot down, US will know. Besides, Iran claims to have shot down f35s, so they clearly want people to think they have that capability.
JohnBooty 2 hours ago [-]
Iran claims to have shot down f35s
The photos were so badly photoshopped, I'm honestly confused as to what their intent was.
mjburgess 5 hours ago [-]
I was merely giving a reason why Iran may not offer evidence of any given success --ie., , in doing so, it would reveal sensitive military information .
I was not making a claim about F35s anyway, I have no specific information nor have I considered any, on relevant claims about F35s
blindriver 6 hours ago [-]
> All of these claims are false.
Source please.
floatrock 7 hours ago [-]
> Iran poses very little threat now, launchers being taken out everyday
What do Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Dubai have in common?
All of their oil tankers sail through a 20mi strip of water called the Straight of Hormuz, completely bordered by Iran on one side. Saudi Arabia has access to the Red Sea and a bunch of pipelines to take some of their oil there, but most of their maritime ports are in the Persian Gulf.
You don't need hypersonic ballistic missiles to take out an oil tanker. Save those for Israel, all you need is a few drones, speedboats, and mines.
Oh, what's that, a good chunk of attack drones undergoing "field trials" in Ukranian population centers are Iranian-made purchased by Russia? And those drones are designed to be launched from mobile trucks in any non-descript garage instead of static missile silos?
We've seen what a rag-tag group of Yemeni rebels with some light rockets have done to ocean shipping at the chokepoint to the Red Sea, now we're gonna see what the people supplying the Houthi's can do at the chokepoint to the Oil Sea.
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday called on China to encourage Iran to not shut down the Strait of Hormuz after Washington carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
Rubio's comments on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo" show came after Iran's Press TV reported that the Iranian parliament approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of global oil and gas flows.
insane_dreamer 43 minutes ago [-]
The problem for Iran is that it also hurts itself as its own terminals are upstream of the straight
tguvot 2 hours ago [-]
houthis been using iran supplied anti ship missiles. not exactly stuff that you pickup in bass pro shops
sanderjd 5 hours ago [-]
This episode has demonstrated that diplomacy is not a credible option. So with that off the table, the only two options now are 1. A series of "1 and done" engagements every few years or months, as the regime tries to race toward a bomb, or 2. Regime change.
It's possible that #2 will happen via domestic uprising, but not at all clear whether the result of that would be a friendlier regime that is less interested in going nuclear. It could very plausibly instead be hardliners who are pissed the regime failed to put up a strong enough fight. (I think that would be what would predictably happen in the US in this scenario, for instance!)
And if it's not a domestic uprising, it's a bloody regime change war like the ones fought in the 00s, which ... didn't turn out great, if you recall!
Possibly #1 is a better outcome. But I'm very skeptical that "we'll just bomb a big country periodically" is a strategy that will never escalate into protracted war.
diggan 7 hours ago [-]
> My money is much more on this being a "1 and done" exchange
For as long as I've been alive, every action from the US in the middle east been a "1 and done" exchange, and Bush famously hosted a "Mission Accomplished" party two months after the start of the invasion of Iraq.
I'd be surprised if this was the only action from the US' side during this war, based on history, but maybe things are different today, seems highly unlikely though.
Panoramix 12 hours ago [-]
Reports are that if Iran keeps things going on, Israel is going to run out of interceptors in 10 days or so, at which point they are gonna be seriously damaged. Some missiles are already getting through, there's speculation of hyper-sonic missiles from Iran or just failure to shoot them down.
Either way: This doesn't stop here, and it was never about these bogus nuclear weapons (which are just around the corner since the 80's) just like Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction. They want to place a puppet government...what could go wrong?
MF-DOOM 11 hours ago [-]
This isn’t accurate. The thing that’s going to possibly be depleted is “Arrow 3” - the first line of aerial defense (excluding operations that target the launchers within Iran). They still have plenty of Arrow 2 and David’s’ slingshot missiles.
Beefin 9 hours ago [-]
this couldn't be more false - jordan and saudi have been shooting down iranian drones. you think america/israel is alone in this dogfight?
EasyMark 54 minutes ago [-]
Unless they find the location of the moved highly enriched uranium, there may be a few follow up bombings to handle that but I suspect Israel would take that on.
LeonB 9 hours ago [-]
Chance of Iran launching a nuclear strike on the US has gone from 0% to 0%.
Chance of terrorist activity on US soil in the next 10 years has increased.
I don’t think it’s improved things for the US.
umbra07 5 hours ago [-]
They could have nuked a neighboring country.
Neighboring countries like KSA have openly declared their intention to get nukes.
They could give the nuke to a proxy (or have it stolen) who then detonates it either at a US military base in the region or on US soil.
karmakurtisaani 12 hours ago [-]
This only happens if Iran sits there and takes it. What if they close the strait? Or shoot missiles to US bases?
infecto 10 hours ago [-]
I have mixed feelings about the current state but is that a legitimate question. I imagine Iran would fire once on the US and then all heck would reign down on them from the skies. I don’t see a situation where Iran can hold on. Most of the people do not support the government.
dreghgh 6 hours ago [-]
What if they hit US bases using 'plausibly deniable' cutouts?
The Glorious Revolutionary Militia of country X, using Iranian built and supplied drones or missiles, blows up young American soldiers in a country half the electorate didn't even know there was a presence in. Iran disclaims all involvement, but says they sympathise with the legitimate frustration of the locals. Do you think the United States gets involved in a hot war against Iran based on that?
Remember the Beirut truck bombings. The biggest single day US Marine loss of life since Iwo Jima. Reagan (and Mitterand) immediately says there will be no withdrawal. They shoot a lot of artillery in the general direction of Hezbollah from a boat, then immediately withdraw all troops.
gcanyon 9 hours ago [-]
> Most of the people do not support the government.
You're implying that a foreign power bombing Iran would make the people less likely to support their government. Do you have justification for that?
GlacierFox 9 hours ago [-]
Iranian people hate the Ayatollahs. They execute any opposition. The populace is literally dying for change.
swat535 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, they do but they love IRAN even more. Defending the country against hostile forces is going to be their priority.
GlacierFox 8 hours ago [-]
Which hostile forces? The US has attacked nuclear sites which they're using to build Nuclear bombs, not sent a warhead into Tehran. I think you're underestimating the dissatisfaction of the Iranian people people with the death cult in charge.
karmakurtisaani 7 hours ago [-]
What would happen to American patriotism if China "pre-emptively" attacked its military research facilities? It would be the only thing on the news, and the only thing people would want would be revenge.
GlacierFox 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah but the difference is that America isn't a fundamentalist theocratic death cult hell bent on eradicating an entire religion and anyone associated with it. There's a stark difference there isn't there? Or are you trying to put Iran and America on the same plane?
karmakurtisaani 2 hours ago [-]
> Yeah but the difference is that America isn't a fundamentalist theocratic death cult hell bent on eradicating an entire religion and anyone associated with it.
Are you sure about that now? Did you miss the part where your president was openly discussing plans on annexing territories from it's allies?
Ah, the American exceptionalism..
bigyabai 7 hours ago [-]
How about you Google SAVAK and then get back to me on how receptive you think Iranian citizens are of American "guidance" under "democratic leadership" and all that jazz.
I think you're underestimating how many Iranians the CIA allowed to be tortured and raped in the Shahist regime. Agree to disagree?
GlacierFox 3 hours ago [-]
So they're more concerned about something that was dissolved in 1979 more than the backward theocratic death cult in charge today?
aGrEe tO dIsAgReE?
spwa4 6 hours ago [-]
Compared to khomeini, who started out by killing (mostly after torture) about 3800, mostly his own allies, some of which hadn't even finished primary school?
bigyabai 5 hours ago [-]
Yes. America's "liberator complex" is pretty much the #1 reason we got dicked down in Vietnam despite expecting a decisive victory.
spwa4 4 hours ago [-]
I think you need to go back to the history of the Iranian revolution and re-read. America was largely with the shah, as was anyone with one iota of sense. The socialist liberator of the people was khomeini, with support from leftists worldwide, from Moscow to Brazil, Berlin to ...
Socialists who kept supporting khomeini after it became very clear that he sent in thugs to murder his own supporters, so he could blame "zionists" for the killings, or that he sent snipers into a protest to fire from within the crowd at security services ... I mean socialists use tactics like that even today, although of course compared to khomeini even the KGB look like gentle souls.
That's one reason everything about Iran's theocratic regime is called "revolutionary this", "the supreme blahblah council", or the double army structure, the reason that a theocracy has a ministry of labour (which unions are forced to be part of, you know, like the soviet union) ... it was created and organized by socialists. They came to power through student protests and union strikes.
Then khomeini started executing them. First, 3800 at once, then between 300 and 1000 every year. Khamenei is dutifully continuing the islamist executions. This year is definitely going to be 5000+ executions.
You know how many deaths are actually attributed to the evil interference of the US in Iran before the revolution? What socialists tried to fix? The reason they supported the mass-murdering clerics?
Being attacked boosts domestic support for leadership, even unpopular ones. If Iran actually attacked the US some how, you can bet Trump's approval rating goes up.
bitmasher9 9 hours ago [-]
The power delta between The United Stated and Iran is lower than any of our other engagements since WW2, and look at how many resources were spent for questionable outcomes.
6 hours ago [-]
noobermin 9 hours ago [-]
At least this comment is second top post. That's all this is, and the American media will cheerlead for it.
thrance 9 hours ago [-]
Gotta somehow manufacture consent for something indefensible.
tim333 13 hours ago [-]
Dunno - better than the alternative of Iran getting nukes.
insane_dreamer 39 minutes ago [-]
We’ve been “on the verge” of Iran getting nukes for decades. They’re about as credible as Saddam’s WMDs at this point. And even if they did I’m not sure that’s so bad. The fact that India and Pakistan both have nukes may help provide a deterrent due to MAD. Might do the same for Iran and Israel (which has nukes already).
karmakurtisaani 12 hours ago [-]
It was not one or the other. Don't buy into that bullshit.
JKCalhoun 9 hours ago [-]
Yep, the market was already on a precarious footing. Monday will likely be a blood bath.
drexlspivey 5 hours ago [-]
Futures are up. The market was also up last Friday when the Israel started bombing Iran
perihelions 6 hours ago [-]
New updates on the estimates of damage at Fordo:
> "A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the American strike on the Fordo site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility but said the strike had severely damaged it, taking it “off the table.” The person noted that even 12 bunker-busting bombs could not destroy the site."
Linked articles also have new satellite imagery from Maxar and Planet.
Ciantic 13 hours ago [-]
The only way out of this in the long term is via negotiations.
The US and Israel were lucky that Iran built their Fordow plant only 50 meters underground. What will the US do when Iran rebuilds it far deeper? They have a coal mine going 1200 meters deep.
Iran is technologically far more capable than North Korea, which ultimately succeeded in building the bomb. The US knows this and wouldn't have started this war if Israel hadn't done it first.
The first Iran deal in 2015 was not perfect, but it would have provided some guarantees for 15 years. If Iran is determined, how many years has this bombing bought? If I had to guess, Israel is back calling doom ~3 years when the US is having new elections.
Israel doesn't want the removal of the Iran sanctions, why would they? This means whatever deal the US makes with Iran, it's not going to be good enough for Israel.
sanderjd 5 hours ago [-]
I think it is fantasy to think we can ever get back to a point where we're seen as a credible negotiating partner, after the events of the past decade.
ReptileMan 3 hours ago [-]
i don't know. I am fairly sure that - you have 60 days to make a deal or we will bomb the shit out of you. And then on the 62nd day bombing the shit from their crown jewels makes the US pretty credible negotiator.
insane_dreamer 38 minutes ago [-]
That doesn’t sound like a credible negotiating partner.
sanderjd 3 hours ago [-]
"You're going to bomb the shit out of us anyway, what's the point?"
They were already having this negotiation, and we started bombing them in the middle of it.
And they already negotiated an agreement a decade ago, and we ripped it up.
It's fine if you think we should have ripped up the JCPOA, or if you think it was good that we joined Israel in this war in the middle of the new negotiation.
But it's simply deluded to think we are a credible negotiating counterparty after this fact pattern.
ReptileMan 3 hours ago [-]
>"You're going to bomb the shit out of us anyway, what's the point?"
So you are saying that if Iran has said one week ago - we will blow up all of the nuclear faculties on Sunday we will give you all of our enriched uranium on Monday, Trump would have still bombed them this Saturday?
sanderjd 1 hours ago [-]
I'm saying that there is zero reason for them to believe that entering into a negotiation with us would keep us from attacking them, because they have done that (twice) and we attacked them in the middle of that negotiation.
Don't get me wrong, I think there could be a face-saving announcement at some point, that we've come to some agreement. But it will have no credibility (on either side).
const_cast 8 minutes ago [-]
Would Trump, a known liar and antognizer, lied and antagonized a foreign nation?
Yeah, probably.
make3 4 hours ago [-]
maybe in 11 to 15 years after eventual respective Democratic and a non-Trump Republican governments
yibg 52 minutes ago [-]
And then the next trump comes in and reneges on all the agreements. Would take a few decades of stability as has been carefully constructed by the US since world war 2.
sanderjd 3 hours ago [-]
The problem with this is that there is now absolutely no reason for anyone to think that any treaty or other agreement made with any US administration (of either party) will remain in force after the next administration takes power.
Rebuilding any credibility internationally will require concerted effort by the legislative and judicial branches (and maybe states ratifying amendments) to rein in the currently out of control power of the executive.
andrewflnr 4 hours ago [-]
This is still very optimistic. The only reason this would work is that America's negotiating partners want to believe the change is real. The American people will remain roughly the same electorate that elected Trump (for a second term, after he incited an insurrection), so the danger will remain.
make3 2 hours ago [-]
The hope would be that Trump would be seen as a one-in-a-kind terrible mix of both hyper-charismatic and negative, like Adolf Hitler
sanderjd 1 hours ago [-]
Very unlikely. He won twice and fully owns one of our two parties. Any hope for "he was an aberration" died last November.
Stevvo 13 hours ago [-]
There is another way out that may be more likely than negotiations; Iran will now obtain a nuclear weapon.
Iran has had the capability to build one for as long as Netanyahu has been singing about it(20+ years). Now they have the motivation also.
bamboozled 9 hours ago [-]
If they had the capability , why was this a bad move and how does taking out their bomb making facilities more likely they can now just produce a bomb ?
HEmanZ 9 hours ago [-]
The main reason to want a bomb is to stop people from interfering with/attacking you.
It has now become even more obvious to them that the most powerful country on earth is willing to attack them in order to control them and their region. Their calculus just went from “probably screwed if we don’t have nukes” to “definitely screwed if we don’t have nukes”. They’ll find a way now, they can always dig deeper.
jraby3 9 hours ago [-]
They have repeatedly threatened Israel and the US. Nothing good (for western democracies) comes from Iran getting a bomb.
Nothing good comes from Iran getting a bomb for us, doesn't mean it's not good for the Iranian regime.
insane_dreamer 36 minutes ago [-]
I’m not sure that’s true. Israel has nukes, so if Iran has them too it help prevent large scale war due to MAD. Like India and Pakistan both have them is better than if only one of them had nukes.
kjkjadksj 5 hours ago [-]
Doesn’t Pakistan and NK do the same? They have bombs. Where is the promised armageddon?
bamboozled 2 hours ago [-]
Isn’t the idea to have less NK and Pakistans though ?
luckylion 9 hours ago [-]
"They only want the bomb to stop others from stopping them getting the bomb."
> Their calculus just went from “probably screwed if we don’t have nukes” to “definitely screwed if we don’t have nukes”.
Or, option 3: totally fine if we don't try to get nukes.
dmbche 3 hours ago [-]
Wasnt Gabbard saying Iran was not and hasn't been working on nukes since 2003?
What if they weren't working on nukes and got bombed anyway - can you imagine what kind of situation that would put them in?
dragonwriter 3 hours ago [-]
Gabbard is a stooge for the Russia/Iran axis, a faction within MAGA which has recently lost out to the stooges for Israel.
dmbche 2 hours ago [-]
Respectfully, drop the conspiracies, the dept of intel has been consistent on this line since 2003, even if she were some kind of whatever you're hoping for, were all the directors since 2003 in the same position?
HEmanZ 7 hours ago [-]
It might be splitting hair, but I do agree that if a new regime gained power that was tightly aligned with some world super power, and got some kind of serious protectorate status, then they could be totally fine without nukes.
The current regime is not safe without them. You can’t honestly believe they are unless you are totally ignorant of the history and state of the region. So the current regime will keep trying until they succeed or are replaced.
ngruhn 6 hours ago [-]
Egypt and Jorden are totally fine without nukes. The only thing they had to do is stop attacking Israel, stop funding terrorist organizations that do and stop threatening Israel with annihilation. Iran is the aggressor here. If they would just chill, they would have nothing to fear.
HEmanZ 6 hours ago [-]
Both Egypt and Jordan are US protectorates with no regional superpowers threatening their ruling regimes. Jordan couldn’t if they dreamed of it, Egypt might have but the US shows no interest in toppling its regime and mediation between them and Israel has been going about as well as possible given their histories.
You’re right, they could chill and be fine. If they trusted the US, or Russia, or China enough to protect them, or trusted Israel to leave their regime alone for the next 100 years. Do you think it’s reasonable for them (the current theocracy) to have this trust in their current position? I find it much more rational that they do not.
bamboozled 2 hours ago [-]
Who needs protecting ? From what I’ve seen not even the populace really wants the current regime there, if it’s wiped out I’m not sure anyone cares but NK China and Russia (terrorist or terrorist funding countries)
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
> Egypt and Jorden are totally fine without nukes
I don’t think the Iranian regime looks at Egypt as either totally fine or even in an enviable state, security-wise.
js4ever 6 hours ago [-]
lets hope they get replaced and we can have "democratic republic of perse" that would be so much better than what iran is currently
HEmanZ 6 hours ago [-]
It’s one of the reasons I’m torn on what the US should do here. I think this intervention is the most likely way a regime change occurs, but the least likely way to stabilize the region. So some small chance of a great outcome, much larger chance of a bad outcome.
I think allowing nuclear weapons in Iran is a very small chance of a very bad outcome, and an almost guaranteed chance of a middling outcome.
How do you balance these? What are the actual risks? I’d love to read more people’s analysis on it.
js4ever 6 hours ago [-]
Nuclear weapons in the hands of crazy islamist terrorists and sponsoring all other terrorists around the world (Hutis, Hezbollah, Hamas, ...), with crystal clear public plans to destroy israel, what could go wrong?
I don't see how it could be worst, any other gov in Iran would be better for the world and for the peoples in Iran.
Are you genuinly thinking that giving nuclear weapons to terrorists is a good idea?
bamboozled 1 hours ago [-]
Apparently your rational viewpoint isn’t mainstream , which is wild.
The Iranian regime is literally sending terrorists in Russia equipment to murder innocent people on the daily, but that’s fine for most people…
thimabi 8 hours ago [-]
> The US and Israel were lucky that Iran built their Fordow plant only 50 meters underground. What will the US do when Iran rebuilds it far deeper?
Most likely Israel would attack even before such a facility became operational. It’s not like they haven’t done preemptive strikes before.
tim333 12 hours ago [-]
Or regime change. Not saying it's a good idea but I'd give it at least 50/50 of happening.
hereme888 6 hours ago [-]
That would be so far into the future, the Ayatollah will be far gone by then.
kyrra 8 hours ago [-]
> The first Iran deal in 2015 was not perfect, but it would have provided some guarantees for 15 years.
And then what? They have nuclear weapons? Which is what Israel and the US doesn't want.
Also, Iran didn't even let inspector into all of the enrichment sites they had, so they were breaking the original deal with Obama from the start.
probably_wrong 7 hours ago [-]
> Also, Iran didn't even let inspector into all of the enrichment sites they had, so they were breaking the original deal with Obama from the start.
I should point out that this view is not unanimous. Using Politifact as a source [1]:
"We reported in 2017 that Iran had largely complied with the deal, and many experts praised the pact for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of Tehran. Over the 28 months the deal was in effect, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it found Iran committed no violations, aside from some minor infractions that were addressed."
And from their linked article[2]:
"A complex, technical process like this one is inevitably going to face small hiccups," said Ariane M. Tabatabai, visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "Just as Iran believes there have been hiccups on the U.S. side."
My understanding is that Iran was largely complying with the treaty by the time Trump decided to scrap it.
15 years is a lot better than immediately resuming enrichment. Which happened as soon as Trump scrapped the previous agreement. It still took them 7+ years to get to where they are now. So, it would have been 22 years, not 15. Trump is a short-sighted fool.
cced 8 hours ago [-]
How do you negotiate with a country(ies?) that blows up your chief negotiators?
ReptileMan 3 hours ago [-]
Carefully and with submissiveness.
5 hours ago [-]
artoghrul 14 hours ago [-]
The military industrial complex always wins in the US, even if the whole reason why you get elected is because you were against it. A majestic mockery of democracy.
HellDunkel 12 hours ago [-]
There is more to be said about the voters than about the military industrial complex here.
tartuffe78 4 hours ago [-]
The two party system has captured the government, we voters have no recourse at the polling booths.
ExoticPearTree 10 hours ago [-]
The voters don't decide if a president can bomb something or not. Or, in the case of the US, how much it can bomb.
seydor 10 hours ago [-]
the voters cannot be held accountable, but politicians can
const_cast 2 minutes ago [-]
No, Trump voters can, and should, be held accountable. They based their entire vote on Trump being stupid and Trump being a liar, while, simultaneously, supporting the policies they claim Trump was lying about. These people are not stupid - they know what they're doing.
righthand 7 hours ago [-]
The voters can be held accountable because Trump was known to have almost no foreign political experience. So much so that his first term they said Mike Pence would handle foreign relations (a huge departure from reason and Vpotus duties). You don’t get to say “well this guy that has no experience is good for the country because we haven’t been to war yet.”
Then when we’re headed to war and passed all the obvious signs then say, “not my fault this known grifter got elected.”
Voters don’t get to ignore Biden and previous administrations pulling us out of middle eastern wars and creating agreements with countries like Iran. Then voters were warned and ignored that the military and weapons lobbies are creating hysteria so they can go back to war and get that defense spending money back.
The war machine has been behind Trump and Republicans for 10+ years and you missed it because voters believe one of Trump’s lies about not wanting war. A guy who lies about everything has voters convinced.
k33n 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
righthand 5 hours ago [-]
Tariffs didn’t crash the economy because he lowered them back to pretty much exactly what they were before he was in office. Had he implemented his insane plan to keep tariffs high, the economy would have crashed. All the carve outs for all the major industries…I’m not sure what you think was a success.
People ARE dying because USAID was scrapped. It will be in the millions by the end of his term. Do you understand how starvation and disease work? It doesn’t happen the day you cut off funding for a tax break for the rich.
You must be living under a rock to think any of his actions have been effective.
You do get to be held accountable for your vote when you eat the result of letting this mad man into a powerful leadership position. When prices go up, you no longer get to turn around and say “liberals did this”. When they deploy ground troops in Iran for 20 years, you do not get to blame “all of us Americans”. When you get pushed out of your social activities because people hear you support genocide in Gaza and going to war in Iran after tearing up agreements and enabling violations of cease-fires like a child, you do not get to turn around and say “I’m satisfied so you must be too. It’s not fair that I’m being socially prosecuted.”
It goes on and on because that’s how reality works if you never follow up then you will never know the effect and the rate at which it happens. Keep plugging your ears!
lawn 7 hours ago [-]
Trump pausing, stalling, and threatening to stop aid to Ukraine is proof otherwise.
USA is now an unreliable ally at best and the military industrial complex is a massive loser because of this switch.
thrance 7 hours ago [-]
The military industrial complex doesn't care who their weapons are used against. Trump plans to add a trillion to the Pentagon's budget, with most of it presumably going to private contractors. How are they losing?
lawn 6 hours ago [-]
Trump could've easily done that without alienating the rest of the world.
Also, Trumps budget only spans a few years while a good export relationship ensures decades of business.
thrance 7 hours ago [-]
Trump was ever against the military industrial complex? News to me. His first presidency should have been enough to classify him as a huge warmonger forever.
amai 6 hours ago [-]
A country like Iran doesn‘t need nuclear energy. It could be like Norway and produce all its energy from renewables/solar, sell its oil and get rich easily. Instead they threaten neighbors, support terrorism and suppress their own people. But if the Israeli/US bombs will convince them to become smarter I really don‘t know.
themagician 4 hours ago [-]
USA says Iran can't have nuclear weapons. Says China can't have modern silicon.
USA only has a limited amount of time left to dictate these things. We are playing with fire before the world order shifts. It is inevitable, and we would all be better off recognizing this and working towards a better future for all of humanity than trying to pretend like the USA is always going to be able to dictate who gets to do what.
nine_k 4 hours ago [-]
China, by all means, can have as modern silicon as they can produce themselves! And they are not bad at it, just not as good as TSMC.
Iran, OTOH, can't have the nuclear weapons they could produce themselves.
(BTW can your neighbor, who keeps saying that he's going to kill you, or maybe your friend, obtain a machine gun? Would you approve of that?)
themagician 4 hours ago [-]
> BTW can your neighbor, who keeps saying that he's going to kill you, or maybe your friend, obtain a machine gun?
Definitely. This is America. There is nothing I can do to stop them.
> Would you approve of that?
No, but I don’t really have much of a say in the matter, and that’s kind of the point. I just have to accept it and try to make peace with my neighbor.
Are you suggesting that if your neighbor threatens you that you should just go over and murder them first?
McDyver 3 hours ago [-]
> BTW can your neighbor, who keeps saying that he's going to kill you, or maybe your friend, obtain a machine gun?
Thy are currently doing to Palestinians what they are suggesting Iran would potentially do to them.
If they had a deterrent, Israel would think twice. But since this neighbour stole a machine gun, they can do what they want...
regularjack 2 hours ago [-]
The US is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons. You don't get to do that, and still keep the moral high ground.
devoutsalsa 5 hours ago [-]
I wonder what the economics of solar are like Iran. As I understand it, the cost for gasoline/benzine is something like 0.04 USD per liter because of state subsidies. It must be hard to justify investing in solar panels when burning dino juice is so inexpensive. I guess you could argue nuclear makes even less sense in that case.
luckylion 4 hours ago [-]
They could sell the oil instead. Even theocracies like money a whole lot.
mystified5016 4 hours ago [-]
Given their general economic state and level of corruption, selling oil is likely to make things much, much worse. Just look at Venezuela.
Also selling oil will only work for a few more decades before people stop buying. It isn't sustainable anymore
bitmasher9 4 hours ago [-]
Sell oil, use income to diversify the economy is a well worn strategy.
kjkjadksj 5 hours ago [-]
Somehow we have the same feelings about Pakistan as we do Iran for most things in geopolitics, but we let Pakistan have a nuclear program. You know, the nation literally harboring Bin Laden.
qeternity 5 hours ago [-]
It's almost as if geopolitical environments evolve over time.
I don't think anyone today would feel any differently about preventing Pakistan from attaining nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately it's very difficult to take nukes away from a country.
pixelpoet 3 hours ago [-]
It was a whole lot easier to take nukes away from a country until America fed Ukraine to the wolves. Great job...
nine_k 4 hours ago [-]
Pakistan / US relations are much, much less strained than Iran / US relations. I'd say Pakistan is more of an ally. Iran is clearly an adversary, its current government declaring the US an enemy and literally Satan.
4 hours ago [-]
make3 4 hours ago [-]
There were diplomatic treaties from Obama that worked, and that Trump cancelled in his last mandate. Doing things competently often allows one to get strictly better outcomes in life, and the current US regime is just horrible.
ggm 22 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the bunker buster was used. It has a somewhat indirect lineage to the ww2 grand slam designed by Barnes Wallis.
Iran has massive earthquake risks. For reasons unassociated with nuclear bunkers they do a lot of research into (fibre, and other) strengthened cement construction. With obvious applications to their nuclear industry of course.
Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour.
hwillis 18 hours ago [-]
> Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour.
Iran does not have the same degree of sexist restrictions as eg Saudi Arabia. It's a very different climate from places where salafism is more common. Female education in particular is highly supported eg: https://x.com/khamenei_ir/status/1869369086142296490
missedthecue 17 hours ago [-]
By a wide margin, the majority of Iranian university students are women. The ratio is over 60/40
Narretz 13 hours ago [-]
I guess because many men are needed for the IRGC and related organisations.
inglor_cz 13 hours ago [-]
I doubt that the intersection of IRGC volunteers and potential university students is too big.
The gender ratio is similar in other Middle Eastern countries. Once women in the Islamic world get the legal right to educate themselves, they tend to make use of it much more than men do. It is a pathway towards personal independence.
tbrownaw 19 hours ago [-]
> Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour.
I thought it was generally known that richer societies with me equal treatment - where people are generally more able to choose jobs they like rather than needing to take whatever's a ticket to a decent life - are the places with higher disparities in well-paying occupations?
Bunker buster is not necessarily a solution for this. It was created for normal bunkers, WW2 style of construction. What they have in Iran are construction sites very deep in the mountains. I wouldn't be surprised if this type of bombs can't do more than superficial damage to the sites.
pigbearpig 18 hours ago [-]
Right...the GBU-57 having been placed into service in 2011 was surely created to destroy 65-year old bunker designs.
19 hours ago [-]
trhway 19 hours ago [-]
GBU-57 reaches 200ft depth, Fordow is 300ft. The seismic wave of explosion at 200ft of several tons of TNT would reach 300ft with pretty damaging energy.
And, if it weren't enough, you can always put a second bomb into the hole made by the first one.
To the commenters below:
- nobody would let Iran to come even close to remilitarizing again. No centrifuges, and no placing them or anything similar under ground, etc.
- I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. The no-fly is necessary, and Israel just doesn't have enough resources. The further scenario that i see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44343063
- jugding by, for example, the precise drone strikes on the top military commanders, Israel has had very good intelligence from Iran, so i'm pretty sure that general parameters like the depth were well known to them (the public statement of 300ft may be a lie, yet the point is that US and Israel know the depth and thus weapons to use)
roenxi 11 hours ago [-]
> - nobody would let Iran to come even close to remilitarizing again. No centrifuges, and no placing them or anything similar under ground, etc.
How would they enforce that? It is underground, they can't exactly monitor what is down there with satellite photos. There'd need to be something like a blanket ban on underground mining across the whole of Iran and probably a country-wide occupation to enforce the ban. Otherwise it seems quite difficult to identify where the hypothetical centrifuges are.
missedthecue 17 hours ago [-]
GBU-57 reaches 200ft of soil and gravel. Not 200ft of 5000psi limestone typical of the Qom formation in that area of Iran.
trhway 16 hours ago [-]
That limestone probably much better transfers the seismic wave of the explosion though.
missedthecue 16 hours ago [-]
The equipment in the facility isn't bolted into the limestone though. The facility is inside ultra high performance concrete and if the Iranian engineers had two braincells, dampening layers. They were building it for this moment after all.
SllX 19 hours ago [-]
Supposedly we dropped six, but I'm interested in any information that comes out about the final damage to see if this was sufficient. Ideally this would be the beginning and end of our direct engagements in this conflict.
EDIT: I kind of wish you had broken your "commenters below" piece into separate replies, but I assume this one was directed at me:
> - I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. The no-fly is necessary, and Israel just doesn't have enough resources. The further scenario that i see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44343063
I didn't even consider a no-fly zone, and perhaps. I mean at this point, the current Iranian regime is in the most precarious situation it has ever been in whether they go for the kill against Ali Khamenei or just keep picking out the people below him and the IRGC's ability to fight. But if we do this, then we, and I guess I mean we now that we've actually bombed them, then we're committing to more than just taking out their nuclear capabilities, but we're committing to seeing a full regime change come to fruition.
To be blunt, given our most recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm still very much of the opinion that the least amount of American involvement, the better. If our bombs help curtail Iran's nuclear weapon R&D and we didn't lose a single B-2 in the process, then great, we've done some good for the world[1], but our track record on seeing regime changes through to the end has been less than fabulous.
[1] Still waiting to see how successful the mission was towards this goal by the way.
shepherdjerred 18 hours ago [-]
I wonder if we have that mission accomplished banner in storage somewhere
18 hours ago [-]
owebmaster 10 hours ago [-]
> then great, we've done some good for the world
Please don't bring this kind of BS to the discussion
crazylogger 19 hours ago [-]
I imagine Iran will just pick a 1000-meter mountain to dig under then?
KaiserPro 14 hours ago [-]
> nobody would let Iran to come even close to remilitarizing again. No centrifuges, and no placing them or anything similar under ground, etc.
Well given that we've been trying to stop that for many years, I doubt its within the US's gift to change that.
Also what has iran got to loose now? like its already being bombed to shit. It's lost a generation to the iran/iraq war, why not another one where they take the USA, israel and saudis with them?
> I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran.
that sounds like a forever war. Moreover trump doesn't have the attention span to deploy a nofly zone for any length of time.
also, have you see the size of iran?
> Israel has had very good intelligence from Iran, so i'm pretty sure that general parameters like the depth were well known to them
yup, but the performance of munitions is unknown. Moreover they are not actually going to tell anyone the real results of the strike. Can you imagine generals telling Hegseth that his plan idea has failed because the clearly articulated unknowns came to pass. let alone trump?
JumpCrisscross 16 hours ago [-]
> you can always put a second bomb into the hole made by the first one
This is tremendously difficult. There is nothing unclassified to suggest we can do this. (There is also no evidence it didn’t occur. Just clarifying the borders of the fog of war here.)
"At 04:30 on the morning of 13 February, two F-117 stealth bombers each dropped a 910 kilograms (2,000 lb) GBU-27 laser-guided bomb on the shelter. The first bomb cut through 3 metres (10 ft) of reinforced concrete before a time-delayed fuse exploded. Minutes later, the second bomb followed the path cut by the first bomb."
8 hours ago [-]
JumpCrisscross 15 hours ago [-]
Huh. Thank you. I'm still cautiously sceptical this scaled to the 57, but less so than before.
coliveira 19 hours ago [-]
> Fordow is 300ft
You seem to believe they really have accurate information about these installations. I doubt it.
creato 18 hours ago [-]
They had pinpoint accurate information about a lot of senior leaders, that seems a lot harder to know than a stationary facility's location and layout.
roenxi 11 hours ago [-]
Tracking a person actually seems pretty easy to do. Hack their phone, launch ze missiles. Obviously not trivial, but it is pretty easy to imagine a chain of events involving a little social engineering and a little spycraft involving the major tech companies. The Iranians thought they were mid-negotiations and assassinating their leadership seems counterproductive even in hindsight, I doubt they were using heightened opsec.
Getting the layout of an underground facility, on the other hand, is quite hard to do even on purpose. They'd really want the engineering plans I suppose - which should be quite secure even on a bad day. I wouldn't assume it was secure but it'd be harder than finding senior leadership who often go out in public or to their kids school plays in a regular year.
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
German contractors helped the Iranians lots. I would be good money that they have been debriefed and/or spied on.
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
Why a no-fly zone?
tguvot 17 hours ago [-]
no fly or not no fly, but iranian foreign minister had to ask permission from idf in order to fly out to geneva
arandomusername 22 hours ago [-]
> I wonder if the bunker buster was used
Most certainly was. It's underground (Fordow is ~60m?) so it's either that or nukes.
ggm 21 hours ago [-]
As I understand it enrichment is by gas centrifuge or thermal diffusion. An earthquake bomb would disrupt both. You wouldn't be starting the feed cycle up rapidly, but since we're told Iran has stockpiles, this goes to sustainable delivery of materials more than specific short term risk.
As a strategy, I see this as flawed. A dirty bomb remains viable with partially enriched materials.
(This does not mean to imply I support either bombing or production of weapons grade materiel. It's a comment to outcome, not wisdom)
AnthonyMouse 20 hours ago [-]
> A dirty bomb remains viable with partially enriched materials.
A dirty bomb is basically Hollywood nonsense, and wouldn't use uranium to begin with because it isn't very radioactive.
The premise is that you put radioactive materials into a conventional explosive to spread it around. But spreading a kilogram of something over a small area is boring because you can fully vaporize a small area using conventional explosives, spreading a kilogram of something over a large area is useless because you'd be diluting it so much it wouldn't matter, and spreading several tons of something over a large area is back to "you could do more damage by just using several tons of far cheaper conventional explosives".
dralley 20 hours ago [-]
Also anything that is dangerous enough to actually be scary in dirty bomb form, like Cobalt-60, would be impossible to handle without providing a lethal dose of radiation to anyone working with he material within minutes if not seconds (presumably a reasonablely large & dangerous amount of this material is involved). At least, not without incredibly expensive equipment. And by the time you factor in those prerequisites it's just not worth it.
bandrami 19 hours ago [-]
The toxicity of the Uranium would be a bigger problem than the radioactivity
AnthonyMouse 19 hours ago [-]
And has the same issue with dilution, and is even more boring because there are much cheaper things with more chemical toxicity than uranium too, like lead.
adastra22 14 hours ago [-]
It isn’t any more toxic than lead, which this bomb probably was filled with.
gh02t 20 hours ago [-]
Uranium, especially highly enriched uranium, is not very radioactive. That's one of the reasons its useful for weapons. UF6 is chemically really nasty, but it's heavy and also you have criticality issues that limit how much you can pack into a confined space before it explosively disassembles. That is to say, it would make an extremely poor dirty bomb that would do very little. It'd scare people of course but there are far easier things they could use to achieve that.
Far more concerning is the possibility that they give it away to someone else. Enrichment is nonlinear, going from 60% to the 90% needed for weapons is a fairly trivial amount of work.
anonymars 20 hours ago [-]
> It'd scare people of course but there are far easier things they could use to achieve that.
I wouldn't discount it, though. Remember, feelings matter more than facts. Magnitudes more people die on the road than in the air, but we know how well that translates to fear and action.
I mean heck, how about 9/11 compared to COVID? Wearing a mask for a while: heinous assault on freedom, Apple pie, and the American way. Meanwhile, the post-9/11 security and surveillance apparatus: totally justified to keep America safe
gh02t 19 hours ago [-]
Yeah, my point is there are much better options that would also induce fear and actually be effective. Fentanyl strapped to an explosive, or any of a ton of other chemical agents. Iran would do far more damage -- and create a deep source of fear that would likely have lingering consequences for decades -- by giving their HEU away rather than making an ineffective dirty bomb. There is no way anybody who knows what they had would use it that way. Even the most fanatical member of the Iranian regime understands what to do with the material better than that.
XorNot 19 hours ago [-]
While true, the problem is it wouldn't meaningfully change the security situation for Iran.
Deliverable nuclear weapons make you invasion proof - nobody wants to risk it. A "dirty bomb" isn't something that can come flying in on an ICBM and eliminate large chunks of your nation - the threat of it is more likely to enhance aggression rather then deter it.
throwaway2037 19 hours ago [-]
> Enrichment is nonlinear
Can anyone explain the science behind this statement? To be clear: I believe it, and I have seen multiple reputable sources say that Iran can enrich to 90% within a few months. I was surprised that it is so quick.
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
You start with natural uranium, which has .72% U-235. Getting from that to 20% is _hard_. You need large cascades of centrifuges to do this because it's only .72%, so each stage gets you just a wee bit more enriched. You do this over and over and over again until you get to higher enrichment. Once you have HEU enriching further is very easy for the same reason that it was hard when it was unenriched: now the stuff you don't want (U-238) is much less. To get from 80% HEU to 96% is trivial using the same centrifuge cascades, and how long it takes really depends on a) how much 80% HEU you have, and b) how much 96% HEU you want. If you have 100lbs of 80% HEU then to get to 10lbs of 96% HEU might really only take weeks if not less when it might have taken years to get from .72% to 80%.
gh02t 7 hours ago [-]
Yep, https://web.mit.edu/22.812j/www/enrichment.pdf is a good starting point if anybody wants to learn more about the economics/logistics of enrichment. Though, it's a notoriously confusing topic so it could take some reading.
Tl;dr is that the amount of energy required to separate a mixture of gasses (U238 waste and U235 product) is roughly proportional to the logarithm of the ratio of the U238 percentage and the U235 percentage. So as your feed stream becomes more enriched in U235, it becomes much easier to do subsequent separations. This log relationship is an approximation, but arises out of the statistical mechanics of separating two mixed gasses and the resulting decrease in entropy.
Edit: a key point most people I'm guessing aren't aware of: centrifuges don't really care what you feed them, whether the feed is natural or 20% or 89% enriched, they just get increasingly more efficient so that a single "pass" through them produces a greater amount of separation as the feed stock becomes more enriched. They do a fixed amount of "separative work" each pass. The same machines can be used to enrich from natural to 20% as 20%-90% (with some relatively minor caveats), and in fact it takes far fewer machines to do the 20-90 step at the same rate as natural-20.
perihelions 14 hours ago [-]
You know how Shannon entropy works in CS, compression and stuff? Atoms work the same way: their mixing entropy is that same x*ln(x) sum which is an extremely steep function near its boundaries. That's your non-linearity. That statistical entropy corresponds to macroscopic thermodynamic properties, enthalpy and work. The starting uranium atom ratios, 0.7%/99.3%, are a very unbalanced mixture deep into that non-linearity side.
(The other half of it is that, as you progressively enrich, you start to discard the "depleted" part of the mass flow, and work only with the, gradually smaller, "enriched" mass flow).
neves 20 hours ago [-]
Remember that Israel had more nuclear bombs than China and never signed any international as tmy treaty.
hollerith 19 hours ago [-]
China is estimated to have approximately 600 nuclear warheads. China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal and is projected to reach at least 1,000 operational warheads by 2030.
Israel is widely believed to possess around 90 nuclear warheads.
invalidname 19 hours ago [-]
Israel never acknowledged that. It is claimed that the US president at the time demanded that Israel kept this a secret to avoid embarrassment to the US.
Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that.
Narretz 13 hours ago [-]
Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it.
im3w1l 9 hours ago [-]
They absolutely do talk about it. Maybe you should ask yourself why you never heard about it though.
invalidname 12 hours ago [-]
> Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it.
That's clever. Virtue signaling 101. And when things turn worse you can pat yourself on the back claiming that your virtue was intact and you were on the "right side of history". You can pretend that none of the violence is related to the side you chose.
The fact is that western ignorance is deeply at fault for the violence in Gaza. Probably more so than many others. Why?
There are three sides to this conflict:
* Moderate people - these are moderate Israelis and Palestinians. These are by far the majority. They might not agree on all the details or even on a Palestinian state, but they don't want violence and will try to avoid it when possible.
* Zero sum players - e.g. Hamas and Israelis who commit crimes e.g. deep settlements, war crimes etc. Some of them are sadly even in the Israeli government now. They've gained strength in Israel thanks to Hamas violence and vice versa. They feed each other. For every Hamas terrorist plot, the Israeli extremists build their base further and commit their own atrocities which result in Hamas gaining traction.
* Chaos actors - This is where Iran is. Some chaos actors don't care who wins and in some cases they choose a side. This is also where you reside. It is not a good place to be in.
Now you might have the knee jerk reaction. You think you're one of the "good guys", but you're not. You picked a side and you throw the blame on Israel while ignoring the legitimate facts Israel has in waging war against a zero-sum player (Hamas).
By blaming Israel for the destruction in Gaza you essentially tell Hamas: no harm no foul. Hamas hears you loud and clear. They can sacrifice all the Palestinian lives, starve them, use children and civilians as cannon fodder. As far as many in the west are concerned, Israel is the only one to blame. That removes their incentive to surrender and encourages them to escalate the violence.
The way they see it is that this encourages hostility which will keep the war going forever. They think that it will create a situation in which Israel will lose western support and will collapse as a result. The problem with this logic is that if Israel loses western support it will likely shift to the extreme right-wing and in that situation the Palestinians would be in serious trouble.
Want proof?
Go to a pro-Palestine rally carrying both a Palestinian flag and an Israeli flag to support co-existence which is supposed to be their goal. It isn't. Try wearing a yellow ribbon in such a rally to encourage the return of innocent civilians from Gaza. Same thing. These are not pro-Palestine rallies, they are anti-Israel rallies. Is it any surprise that Israel is becoming more extreme?
8note 3 hours ago [-]
i think you missed the point.
they're saying in fewer words "watch what leaders say, not what they do"
iran might be saying a lot, but if it wanted war, it would have been attacking, the same way that israel is attacking gaza, not threatening gaza.
even now when iran has responded to israel's attacks, you still seem to care more about iran's threats than iran's missiles.
-----
on your very long aside, you are mislabelling the positive sum behaviour as zero-sum.
you might see the point in putting at least equal blame between israel and hamas for the conflict with the positive sum descriptor. israel is in a mutually beneficial escalation and continuation of violence with hamas. an extreme right wing populace in israel is a win both for hamas and for israel. neither care about the palestinians, nor the israelis.
ExoticPearTree 10 hours ago [-]
> Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that.
Calling for it and being actually able to do it are two very different things.
It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to.
invalidname 10 hours ago [-]
So based on your logic we should just let them gain that ability and see what happens?
> It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to.
Since they conducted decades of terrorism against Israel the USA and our allies a more apt example would be a person who repeatedly stabbed our friends is trying to get a bomb that could kill us all.
It's amazing to me how people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to people who literally led terrorist attacks against their country. To people who would stone gay people and punish women for the crime of rape. But won't give a similar benefit of doubt to the people opposing them. Who won't consider that, maybe, just maybe, the stuff you read on the internet isn't the whole truth.
ExoticPearTree 9 hours ago [-]
> Since they conducted decades of terrorism against Israel the USA and our allies a more apt example would be a person who repeatedly stabbed our friends is trying to get a bomb that could kill us all.
I'm going to play a childish game with you: who started it first?
> Who won't consider that, maybe, just maybe, the stuff you read on the internet isn't the whole truth.
Are you saying people on the internet lie?
invalidname 8 hours ago [-]
> I'm going to play a childish game with you: who started it first?
You can say that the CIA. Not Israel. But again that's a child's game just like you said.
How many Jews conducted suicide bombings in Germany after the holocaust?
We moved on, I can't say forgive and forget but we go to Germany and Austria. We talk and we live.
> Are you saying people on the internet lie?
Yep. And exaggerate and simplify the wrong things.
Iran is prone to earthquakes, would an earthquake bomb do more damage than that?
Even if it just damages the centrifuges, as far as I see it, it would just delay their enrichment process, severely less than total destruction of their underground base.
ggm 21 hours ago [-]
Yes that's basically my point. They recalibrate, tighten the pipes, and flush the contamination back out of the chain. 6 to 8 weeks/days/whatever later it's back in cycle.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
If they can even get back in
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
> As I understand it enrichment is by gas centrifuge or thermal diffusion.
Centrifuges. They got them via the A. Q. Khan network. We learned about if circa 2005 from Qaddaffi who gave up his to secure peace and his safety (and it didn't turn out well for him because Obama did not respect the gentleman's deal Qaddaffi had with Bush).
nopelynopington 13 hours ago [-]
Whatever about bombing Iran with conventional weapons, being the first president since Truman to nuke another country would split Trumps support base, and also legitimize using nuclear weapons in regional conflicts which would be extremely bad news for Ukraine
tehjoker 22 hours ago [-]
the bunker buster, if used, will almost certainly be nuclear. estimated tonnage: 300 kt
p_ing 22 hours ago [-]
MOP is a conventional weapon, 30,000 lbs. Only the B-2 is rated to carry it.
Genuinely surprised that Israel couldn't push one out of their c-130s
algorithmsRcool 19 hours ago [-]
The kinetics matter here. The B2 flies much higher than the C-130 which would aid the GBU-57 MOP (almost certainly used here) in it's ability to penetrate to maximum depth. 80% of the 15 ton weight of that bomb is just heavy metal to give it maximum energy as it borrows into the ground.
Also, each B2 can carry 2 MOPs making it a better platform than a C-130, and that isn't even taking the stealth of the platform into account
xnx 19 hours ago [-]
> Also, each B2 can carry 2 MOPs
Wow. That is amazing. 60,000 lbs. combined.
1659447091 20 hours ago [-]
Don't think the C-130s can fly high enough with a single 30,000lb bomb. The graphic at bbc site show it would be dropped from about 12km (~40,000 ft) in order to gain the speed needed to drive it some 60m underground.
ahazred8ta 19 hours ago [-]
From 40,000 feet, the bomb would take ~ 50 seconds to fall and would impact at mach 1.5.
CyanLite2 20 hours ago [-]
Various sources are saying 6 to 12 of these bombs were used. So, you'd need a lot of C-130s and those planes are too slow to NOT get shot down.
giantg2 20 hours ago [-]
Do they even have access to this variant? I thought they had access to the older ones that weren't as advanced.
dingaling 18 hours ago [-]
The MOP isn't particularly 'advanced', it's basically refined version of the Korean-vintage Tarzon guided earthquake bombs. It's just too heavy for most military aircraft to carry.
The IDF has the F-15I which has a centerline hard point rated for 5,000lb load. That's immense for a fighter but a magnitude too low for the MOP.
There are a variety of smaller US penetrating bombs that the F-15 can handle, but they don't have the mass and structure to penetrate as deeply.
YZF 20 hours ago [-]
They do not.
ceejayoz 20 hours ago [-]
Israel hasn’t degraded Iranian air defenses that much. The stuff that can’t threaten a F-35 can still trouble a C-130.
invalidname 19 hours ago [-]
According to Israel they fly freely in West/central Iran and use all the plains including F15/16. Initially they relied on the F-35's stealth but as of last week they claim air superiority.
energy123 19 hours ago [-]
Why do you say this? Israel only lost 1 drone.
pclmulqdq 4 hours ago [-]
The US has B52s that are cheaper, but they used B2s for this operation. It seems they don't believe Iran's air defenses to be toothless.
ceejayoz 7 hours ago [-]
C-130s are very large, slow targets.
tguvot 17 hours ago [-]
video shows how confused and disoriented are whatever SAM that survived
The GBU-57 was most likely used, which is non nuclear
ranger_danger 20 hours ago [-]
> almost certainly be nuclear
Source:
ggm 21 hours ago [-]
This is nonsense.
tehjoker 18 hours ago [-]
those of you hating on this comment, the conventional weapons could not possibly work, the facility is too deep
tempestn 18 hours ago [-]
Even after everyone corrected you with information on the specific ordinance used, you're doubling down?
tehjoker 17 hours ago [-]
they might be right, but that's why the attack failed and why there's a risk what I said might still come true
i was listening to Al Jazeera, one of the DC flaks they interviewed gave an upper estimate of the facility depth as 1000 ft. The conventional device can go to something like 60m or 200 ft. 6 devices were dropped, they would have to have everything, including geology with repeated strikes on the same point, be perfect to get past 1000 feet, and then they probably would not destroy the whole facility. As far as I know, they don't even have a good map of the layout.
hence, the only real option is a nuclear weapon. this is absolutely being considered inside the pentagon. our government is psychotic. a 1 kt nuclear weapon (laughably small, hiroshima was 15 kt) is 73x more powerful than a 30,000 lb bomb. they would be like, well, it's an underground explosion! The world will forgive us. it's so crafty and smart to use a nuke to stop a nuke (that doesn't exist).
"The effectiveness of GBU-57s has been a topic of deep contention at the Pentagon since the start of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were briefed that perhaps only a tactical nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Fordow because of how deeply it is located."
Ok, I see the logic, but nuclear weapon use is the brightest red line in the world. If there's anything a government wouldn't be forgiven for, it's that. I can't imagine how the calculus for the US would work out in favor given the risk. (Of course that assumes rationality, which one could certainly argue is lacking, but even still.)
Also 1000ft is an upper estimate, right? It's certainly possible the MOPs were sufficient.
8note 3 hours ago [-]
the US has already been forgiven for nuclear weapon use, twice. this would suggest that the US would be forgiven a third time
tehjoker 1 hours ago [-]
It’s possible the MOP was sufficient but I suspect not. Probably parts of the facility are shallower and others are deeper, such is the topology of a mountain.
If you ever engage with what Daniel Ellsberg said, or US plans in north korea or vietnam, you’d know just how close the US comes to actual use in war. It’s never off the table. They are currently concerned with peer competition with China. There is likely a faction that would propose to attempt to show american strength on an unarmed target just like we did with Japan.
However at this juncture i’m starting to think this is all a show and they only care about the optics. Iran has already moved its equipment out of Fordow. However if the Iran war continues, expect things to get increasingly ugly.
tiffanyh 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, bunker buster was used. Per a different source:
> It included a strike on the heavily-fortified Fordo nuclear site, according to Trump, which is located roughly 300 feet under a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran. It's a move that Israel has been lobbying the U.S. to carry out, given that only the U.S. has the kind of powerful "bunker buster" bomb capable of reaching the site. Known as the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), the bomb can only be transported by one specific U.S. warplane, the B-2 stealth bomber, due to its immense 30,000 pound weight.
I read the article in full. There is no confirmation of using GBU-57 in the strike. Re-read your quoted section.
The English is a bit convoluted, but does do not confirm usage.
Tin foil hat engaged: For all we know special forces detonated plastic explosives deep on site after doors were blown off.
More seriously: Nothing has been confirmed except a Truth Social post.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
It’s the only bomb types that make sense given how deep Fordow is buried
tptacek 19 hours ago [-]
CNN reports 12 GBU-57s were dropped on Fordow.
Can I say again how deeply silly this munition is? What's special about a GBU-57 isn't its explosive force. It's that the bomb casing is made out of special high-density ultra-heavy steel; it's deliberately just a super heavy bomb with a delayed fuse. It is literally like them dropping cartoon anvils out of the sky.
From what I've read, the idea is that they keep dropping bombs into the same bomb-hole that previous sorties left, each round of bombs drilling deeper into the structure.
boston_clone 4 hours ago [-]
> Can I say again how deeply silly this munition is?
Honestly, I'd rather you not. For those who are more personally familiar with warfare and combat operations, consistently describing any sort of bomb as "silly" is childish and inaccurate to the point of making me wonder if there's an ulterior motive with your description.
This is not "Looney Tunes".
GoatInGrey 2 hours ago [-]
The typical person compartmentalizes between a weapon's use in military operations and its engineering. You see similar dynamics with things like military aircraft at air shows. Where kids and adults alike enjoy the demonstrative operation of the machines without ruminating on how many human souls were negatively affected by them.
boston_clone 1 hours ago [-]
Compartmentalization is a coping mechanism. That children are exposed to similar military engineering in such a way to make it enjoyable does not negate the nature of a bomb, tank, or machine gun.
ReptileMan 14 hours ago [-]
>Can I say again how deeply silly this munition is?
If it is silly and it works, then it is not silly. If I remember correctly you have good cryptography skills. Rectothermal/rubber hose cryptoanalysis is quite silly too, but breaks AES,RSA,ECC and post quantum crypto schemes in 30 seconds.
foobarian 9 hours ago [-]
> keep dropping bombs into the same bomb-hole
I wonder how practical this part is.
chasd00 1 hours ago [-]
If the weather is good and no jamming of gps it’s very practical. The bunker buster is basically a very large jdam and their precision is around 5 meters iirc.
stogot 18 hours ago [-]
So many armchair quarterbacks in this thread. You haven’t defined how silly this is beyond your feelings. Are you a munition expert? If you were an AF general given this order, what tactic would you choose excluding a nuke?
The same bomb hole tactic is an untested theory (which may be ineffective but not silly) but we’ll know more later this week once MAXAR surveillance and other independent or IAEA analysis rolls in.
tptacek 17 hours ago [-]
I'm not an expert. I just think dropping giant anvils from the sky is Loony Toons tactics. Maybe it works great! I don't know! But it's worth knowing how these things work, and how they work is: they're just super super heavy.
Dylan16807 17 hours ago [-]
You are reading the wordy "silly" incorrectly.
FridayoLeary 21 hours ago [-]
Thanks for trying to make this into a technical discussion.
I just realised that this bomb is not the same as the so called Mother of all bombs, which by the way has so far only been used once also by trump. That's the gbu 43. Why did they find
it necessary to build an even bigger bomb? I wonder if they anticipated strikes on the me.
As to your other point iran seems to have a decent level of education. Building an entire home grown nuclear program under sanctions is impressive.
_heimdall 20 hours ago [-]
The MOP is meant for a different use than the MOAB, it isn't about size. The MOAB is meant for surface destruction, the MOP is a penetrating ordinance meant to go deep through rock before eventually exploding.
ggm 21 hours ago [-]
Different outcomes. Moab is fuel air explosion and causes massive pressure wave disruption, it's usable against tunnels but operates on a different principle. Bunker buster is an earth penetration weapon to make a camouflet happen and destroy structural integrity.
> A camouflet, in military science, is an artificial cavern created by an explosion; if the resulting structure is open to the surface it is called a crater.[1]
jandrewrogers 21 hours ago [-]
The GBU-57 used here is an outgrowth of the demonstrated inadequacy of traditional bunker busters bombs used in the Middle East after 9/11. They needed something more specialized for deep penetration than the old bunker busters. This was kind of a stopgap weapon that works pretty well but the size limits the practicality.
US is developing a new generation of purpose-built deep penetration bombs that are a fraction of the size of the GBU-57.
hooo 20 hours ago [-]
What’s the core technology that enables them? It is crazy how deep the GBU-57 can get before detonating
ggm 20 hours ago [-]
Case hardening. Making something which if propelled fast enough (secondary issue) and with a G force resisting detonator (secondary issue) which has sufficient integrity and inertia to penetrate as deeply as possible before exploding. Materials science in making aerodynamic rigid, shock tolerant materials to fling at the ground.
I am sure the materials science aspects have come along since ww2, as has delivery technology, but I'd say how it goes fast, hits accurately and explodes is secondary to making a case survive impact and penetrate.
I would posit shaped charges could be amazing in this, if you could make big ones to send very high energy plasma out. I'm less sure depleted uranium would bring much to the table.
(Not in weapons engineering, happy to be corrected)
giantg2 20 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure you would want a shaped charge unless you guarantee it was pointing in the right directionatthe right time. Modern bunker design usually includes deflection tactics.
kragen 20 hours ago [-]
According to public information, Eglin steel.
I was guessing either tungsten or depleted uranium, as for APDS, but the bomb's average density is only about 5 g/cc (14 tonnes in 3.1 m³). Length of 6.2 m times 5 tonnes per cubic meter gives a sectional density of 31 tonnes per square meter, which is about 15 meters of dirt. So Newton's impact depth approximation would predict a penetration depth one fourth of the reported 60-meter depth.
I don't know how to resolve the discrepancy. The plane wouldn't fly if the bomb weighed four times as much. Maybe most of the bomb's mass is in a small, dense shaft in the middle of the bomb, which detaches on impact?
creato 18 hours ago [-]
> Length of 6.2 m times 5 tonnes per cubic meter gives a sectional density of 31 tonnes per square meter, which is about 15 meters of dirt. So Newton's impact depth approximation would predict a penetration depth one fourth of the reported 60-meter depth.
This seems to assume that the weapon would penetrate until it displaced an equal amount of dirt by mass, which seems like nonsense. Why would that be the case?
kragen 17 hours ago [-]
You have the key phrase to Google right there in the text you quoted
18 hours ago [-]
barrkel 19 hours ago [-]
How much does refinements of shape, terminal velocity, target characteristics change the calculation?
kragen 19 hours ago [-]
I don't know.
Shape can change it to be arbitrarily bad; 14 tonnes of 5-micron-thick Eglin steel foil spread over a ten-block area wouldn't penetrate anything, just gently waft down, although it could give you some paper cuts. I suspect it can't make it much better, except in the sense of increasing sectional density by making the bomb longer and thinner, which we already know the results of.
Velocity doesn't enter into Newton's impact depth approximation at all. It does affect things in real life, but you can see from meteor craters that it, too, has its limits.
Target characteristics, no idea, but in a fast enough impact, everything acts like a gas. It's only at near-subsonic time scales that condensed-matter phenomena like elasticity come into play. Even at longer time scales the impact can melt things. This of course comes into conflict with the design objective of the bomb acting solid, so that it penetrates the soil instead of just mixing into it, and can still detonate when it comes to rest. I feel like buried plates of the same metal would have to be able to deflect it? And there are plenty of other high-strength alloys.
tguvot 17 hours ago [-]
A system described in the 2003 United States Air Force report called Hypervelocity Rod Bundles[10] was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods that are satellite-controlled and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10.[11][12][13]
The bomb would naturally contain large kinetic energy because it moves at orbital velocities, around 8 kilometres per second (26,000 ft/s; Mach 24) in orbit and 3 kilometres per second (9,800 ft/s; Mach 8.8) at impact. As the rod reenters Earth's atmosphere, it would lose most of its velocity, but the remaining energy would cause considerable damage. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.[13] These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster.[12][14] As the name suggests, the 'bunker buster' is powerful enough to destroy a nuclear bunker.
I did some quick calculations: The energy of the impact from the stored kinetic energy gained by falling fro 15,000m is about the same as half a kiloton of TNT going off. That's focused into a circle just 80cm in diameter.
Qem 3 hours ago [-]
Your calculations appear to be off by a factor of ~1000. Not half a kiloton, but half a ton (~500kg), assuming fall in a vacuum (upper bound on impact energy):
Python 3.10.12 (main, May 27 2025, 17:12:29) [GCC 11.4.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
MOP_potential_energy = 13607*9.8*15000 # E = m*g*h
MOP_potential_energy
2000229000.0
TNT_specific_energy = 4.184e9/1000 # joule/kg
TNT_specific_energy
4184000.0
MOP_potential_energy/TNT_specific_energy
478.0662045889101
kragen 3 hours ago [-]
Oh, yeah, I redid the calculations myself and also got 400-some kg. I didn't notice the tonne vs. kiloton error!
kragen 17 hours ago [-]
Yet setting off half a tonne of TNT on the ground, or even just under it, won't penetrate 60 meters deep, or even 15; it will just blast open a shallow crater. A shaped charge will do only a little better.
giantg2 20 hours ago [-]
It's not that crazy. It's simple physics. Drop a 15 ton metal lawn dart from 50,000 feet and it has a lot of energy.
algorithmsRcool 19 hours ago [-]
No real secret sauce, the weapon weighs almost 30,000lbs and most of it is just hardened metal to make it heavy. The warhead is only ~5,300lbs of explosive
klipt 20 hours ago [-]
> an entire home grown nuclear program
It's not entirely home grown if they were part of the NPT is it? Signing the NPT (a pinky promise not to develop weapons) means other countries then help you develop nuclear energy, which of course has a lot of overlap to weapons tech...
the__alchemist 20 hours ago [-]
- MOP: High penetration; most of its payload is not explosive. (Something heavy). Designed so its body, fuse, explosives etc remain intact after penetrating deep.
- MOAB: Fuel air explosive for massive blast effect.
testrun 19 hours ago [-]
It seems that they have help from the Russians. Putin last week mentioned that there are quite a few Russian nuclear scientists in Iran.
econ 19 hours ago [-]
200+
giraffe_lady 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ggm 20 hours ago [-]
I doubt anyone here works in defence materials sciences and like the rest of the world would be 49/51 regarding voting intention. I've never voted for a pro war party fwiw but if I'd been of an age, I would have called ww2 a just cause war.
This isn't a just cause and it's not even a war. It's state sanctioned terror. I don't know it has ism in it.
Australian legal opinion says it's unlikely a credible defence in international law exists for this attack. It may redefine the norms for (un)lawful acts by the state, other states, weak and powerful will undoubtedly reflect on this.
It's also being claimed a success. Words like "obliterated" used. Time tends to tell a story there. I think it's a little too soon to say how successful these strikes were, tactically or strategically.
yencabulator 20 hours ago [-]
> Australian legal opinion says it's unlikely a credible defence in international law exists for this attack.
The international community has known for a while that USA and Israel are both belligerent nations.
I've heard 6 at Fordow, and 30 or so Tomahawks across Natanz and Isfahan.
Havoc 2 hours ago [-]
They carry 2x each, so 6 planes 12 bombs. And then single plane natanz, 2 bombs
_heimdall 19 hours ago [-]
I heard the same as well, the reference was to an interview Trump gave on Fox.
My expectation is that it was 3 rounds of 2 MOPs, hedging bets and potentially cresting a larger hole than drilling a hole one bomb at a time.
jmyeet 19 hours ago [-]
So facts are thin on the ground currently. More will become clear in the coming days. I've heard different accounts all the way from 12 bunker busters were used on Fordo to none were used and the entrance was bombed after Iran was warne, kinda like a warning shot, to say "we can get you".
What Iran does next depends on the extent of the damage. It could be nothing. It could be a token response. It could be escalation.
But so far Iran has been the only rational actor in this region. Iran has been attacked with justification. Anytime someone says "preemptive strike" they mean "attack without justification". Their responses have been measured, rational, justified and proportionate.
When Israel tried to previously escalate the conflict with Iran and drag the US into war with Iran, Iran just didn't take the bait. And this is despite Israel assassinating government officials, bombing Iranian embassies and bombing Iran for absolutely no reason.
tbrownaw 19 hours ago [-]
> But so far Iran has been the only rational actor in this region. Iran has been attacked with justification. Anytime someone says "preemptive strike" they mean "attack without justification". Their responses have been measured, rational, justified and proportionate.
Either I'm misunderstanding (or misreading) something, or at least one of these sentences accidentallied a negation.
PaulHoule 22 hours ago [-]
When I was doing a postdoc in Germany I shared an office with a woman from Morocco so my office was a meeting point for many islamic woman including one from Iran who complained bitterly about how women were treated in her country but who did get the opportunity to get an advanced education.
leyth 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
megous 22 hours ago [-]
How is this relevant to Trump bombing Iran?
bigyabai 22 hours ago [-]
It's the most-salient comment you can write without being [flagged] [dead] for "off-topic" conversation.
PaulHoule 22 hours ago [-]
The parent post was about Iranian women jobs getting jobs in engineering. Whatever restrictions are on them, they don't seem to have trouble getting STEM education.
owebmaster 20 hours ago [-]
You said it in a way that sounded like no woman is oppressed if they can get high level education.
anonymars 20 hours ago [-]
I took the contradiction as the point: that they are oppressed and yet, surprisingly, not with respect to educational opportunity
> including one from Iran who complained bitterly about how women were treated in her country but who did get the opportunity to get an advanced education
jordanb 20 hours ago [-]
Consent isn't going to manufacture itself.
coliveira 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
19 hours ago [-]
devzx 6 hours ago [-]
This thread is a prime example of education != wisdom.
uncircle 6 hours ago [-]
It’s not even education. Many people operate on the belief that being able to use Google and following a couple “experts” on Twitter, of both sides, automatically qualifies their opinion.
At best everyone is repeating the same propaganda talking points, whether US or Iranian (though most of us are from Western countries, so it skews heavily on one side). The Internet is an echo chamber of ill-informed opinions.
GMoromisato 6 hours ago [-]
Not the whole thread--just the posts I disagree with.
AaronAPU 5 hours ago [-]
I think both sides can agree, the other side is stupid and evil.
simpaticoder 4 hours ago [-]
Or rather, a prime example of education != wisdom != experience. Who has experience operating at the geopolitical scale? Very, very few. And this is by nature of the problem: coherent choices are only made at the individual level, by political leaders. The real cohort that should be considered expert are therefore political leaders, past and present. Unfortunately, they all have deeply ingrained bias for their own nation's geopolitical goals, and so cannot be objective. To make matters worse, the context of every crisis point is so unique as to be almost worthless in meeting the demands of the next one, so even experience is not necessarily enough for expertise.
I would argue that the best voices to listen to about such matters are the academic historians that focus on the region involved, and who've studied in great detail the evolution of the region over time, how crises were resolved in the past, and who therefore have an informed intuition for the current state of the region. Furthermore, because they are academics they are practiced in objectivity -- the ability to look at horrifying situations with fascination rather than disgust.
But such experts tend to be ignored for two reasons: they generally aren't charismatic enough to get attention, and "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it; those who do know history are doomed to watch others repeat it". This might seem rather gloomy. It is precisely the same level of gloom with which we would watch any slow-moving natural phenomena threaten life on Earth, for example. Like seeing a nearby supernova explode, knowing that one of it's nuetrino jets will eventually rotate and hit us within 100 years. The mass and momentum of geopolitics is enormous and almost impossible to change, with or without understanding.
So, we chat with each other, armchair quarterbacking this game in which no-one really has control.
GMoromisato 5 hours ago [-]
I'm curious to hear people's predictions for the future:
1. Will Iran escalate, stay-the-course, or yield more in negotiations? Or take some other action I haven't thought of.
2. If Iran escalates, how far will it go?
3. If Iran does a token retaliation without major escalation, but refuses to give up its remaining nuclear program, what happens? Will the Israeli's be satisfied with a 2-4 year delay in Iran's program or will they continue low-grade attacks for the foreseeable future?
4. If Iran yields in negotiations, how far will they go? Will the agree to cease enrichment? If so, will they try to cheat? Or will the US accept some amount of enrichment and end up with a variant of JCPOA?
5. Do you think something else will happen not covered above?
6. What will the situation be in 10 years? 25 years?
layer8 2 hours ago [-]
Medvedev wrote on social media today that “Critical infrastructure of the nuclear fuel cycle appears to have been unaffected or sustained only minor damage. The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads”.
If there’s anything to that statement, things are likely to remain messy.
deepsquirrelnet 3 hours ago [-]
Worldwide, it’s always the presidents who need to cling to power to avoid accountability.
We already pulled the “they have WMDs” card, despite significant credibility problems.
We have a completely inexperienced 22 year old in charge of terrorism prevention at a time when any act of terrorism against the US would be a nightmarish scenario for escalation.
To me it looks as though we sent the invitation and left a note that the front door is unlocked.
827a 5 hours ago [-]
IMO #3. They'll moan for a bit. Continue firing rockets. A couple weeks of this; Iran will claim that Iran won, Israel will claim Israel won. There won't be negotiations or concessions. They'll continue trying to develop nukes, but these past two weeks has set them back years. Things go quiet. In ten years we'll do this all over again.
The thing people seem to not recognize is: There's basically three countries on the planet capable of actually waging war in the 21st century (US, and Russia/China barely). Every other country is just a proxy for one of these three; their domestic capabilities look more like "throwing a tantrum" than actual war. Israel can't wage war without the US. Iran can't wage war without China/Russia. Currently, the superpower contribution to this fight is just dropping some bombs and diverting a few crates of AK-47s.
There's zero capability for long-term war here. But, there's also too much face-saving for negotiations or concessions to happen. So, the fire mostly quenches into embers; like the middle east has always been.
xdennis 5 hours ago [-]
That seems ideal, but my fear is that Iran won't stop.
It's cheaper to build low precision rockets/drones than the Israeli interceptors, so the war _could_ swing in Iran's favor in the long term.
Additionally, Iranians aren't rising up because they don't want to be seen as being controlled by foreigners, but once the war stops, the Iranian regime will have to answer to its citizens. This means the mullahs have no incentive to stop.
sanderjd 5 hours ago [-]
Not only will they not stop, this has massively increased their incentive to successfully create a nuclear program.
In the opposite direction but with the same outcome, the just-barely-enough aid that Ukraine has received after being invaded by Russia, has demonstrated that it's foolish for countries to give up their own nuclear weapons, on the understanding that a friendly superpower will protect them.
This has been a very bad decade of events for incentivizing nuclear non-proliferation. I hate it!
GMoromisato 4 hours ago [-]
That is certainly the conventional wisdom. But is it right?
Imagine that Iran already had 10 nuclear bombs and the US bombed the production sites with B2s. What would Iran do? They can't drop a nuke on the US, and even if they could, that would just ensure their destruction.
Of course, one could argue that Iran is not rational and that it would nuke NYC even if it meant being destroyed as a country. But if we're assuming that they are irrational, then that's all the more reason to get rid of their weapons, even if it meant taking casualties.
And note that the same calculation applies with Iran vs. Israel. If Israel attacks Iran conventionally, Iran cannot escalate to nuclear without also getting destroyed (since Israel has a larger arsenal).
Moreover, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, actually demonstrates the uselessness of nuclear weapons. Yes, NATO and the US were initially deterred because of fears of Russian escalation, but we've continued to cross "red-lines" in arming Ukraine without escalation (tanks, F16, missile attacks on Russian soil, etc.). I'm pretty confident that Europe at least will continue to support Ukraine with ever more powerful weapons without fear of Russia's nuclear threats.
sanderjd 3 hours ago [-]
You don't have to speculate like this. We can just look at how North Korea is treated, now that they do have nuclear capability. From the Iranian (or Ukrainian) perspective, the conclusion can only be "better than us".
In your hypothetical, we're sending B2s to drop bombs on their production sites. In the reality, we would not do that, for the same reasons that we are not sending B2s to drop bombs on North Korea's production sites.
GMoromisato 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe. It certainly would not surprise me if you're right--that's why it's the conventional wisdom.
But these kind of events--Israel defanging Hezbollah, US destroying nuclear sites--should change our priors. And it might change priors in Iran too. Until we actually sent B-2s in, Iran didn't know whether we ever would. They might have held out hope that we were bluffing--that we would never risk a $2 billion plane (not to mention a crew) on bombing a site that only sets back the program a couple of years.
Now that the US has done it, what's to stop us from doing it again later? Why bother spending so much effort on a program that gets blown up every few years? Maybe they'll just try to hide it better, but can they really rely on not having intelligence leaks, given the massive intelligence failures of the past few months?
And North Korea is not a great example. Even if it's true that their nuclear program has deterred us, they bought it at an enormous cost: North Korea is completely isolated. Iran would like to get rid of the current sanctions and start integrating into the rest of the world. Even if the regime doesn't care about its people, it still wants aircraft parts and oil revenue. The US and Israel would be fine if Iran continued to slowly rebuild its nuclear program, as long as it remained under sanctions. They can just wait five years and bomb again. But is that really a victory for Iran?
My point is that these events might cause Iran to re-evaluate the cost/benefits of their current strategy. They might decide that rushing to build a nuclear bomb is not worth the very large costs.
sanderjd 1 hours ago [-]
First of all, I disagree with your characterization of what the conventional wisdom is. I don't think most people are thinking about this at all. Most people will come down on rah rah America or boo war is bad, not "it's bad that specifically only countries that don't have nuclear weapons get attacked, because of the bad incentives".
But if this were the conventional wisdom, I'd say that it's clearly right, and you're doing 5d chess to avoid looking it in the face.
827a 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah; I also tend to feel that nukes are vastly overstated in their sovereign defensive capability. Definitely non-zero, they help, but at the end of the day having strong normative political and especially economic ties is vastly more powerful.
Ukraine didn't have nukes. Would they have been invaded if they had nukes? Unclear. Maybe. Maybe not.
Taiwan doesn't have nukes. China wants to control Taiwan so, so bad. But, they're staying at a distance for now. Why? Taiwan is an extremely valuable economic ally of the rest of the world. No one wants to disrupt the status quo. We're too interconnected.
Iraq was reported to have nukes back in the 00s, and this was a reason why the US invaded them. We now know, they never had nukes. Maybe there were leaders in the US who knew this at the time, and just outright lied. But, if not: nukes did not protect them from being rubbleized by the US military industrial complex.
Poland doesn't have nukes. Russia isn't going to touch them, despite bordering deep Russian ally Belarus. What makes them so different from Ukraine? NATO. Political alliances. Ukraine didn't make political alliances. No one gave any thought to Ukraine before and even after Crimea; they were always just a weirdly dysfunctional and corrupt ex-Soviet country that no one cared about. Poland is different; they played ball with the west.
North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Well, maybe nukes. But moreso: they're chill. They don't have external ambition. They can barely take care of themselves. They aren't calling for the rubblezation of their enemies anymore. Its not the nukes that keep them safe; its the reality that they're kinda playing ball with the rest of the world, in their own way.
Nukes probably help, but the far more likely guarantor of sovereignty is to be valuable to the rest of the world. Have a democratic government. Communicate. Trade. Address corruption. The main thing that Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, 1950s Vietnam, Syria, Libya, etc all have in common is that they're all backward, isolationist countries that never wanted to join up on the global stage, for either side. NK is the only one that's really managed to stay that way mostly unscathed.
sanderjd 10 minutes ago [-]
> Ukraine didn't have nukes. Would they have been invaded if they had nukes? Unclear. Maybe. Maybe not.
Generally interesting comment, but this particular thing is faux uncertainty, I think. The answer is clearly no.
The way North Korea is using their nukes is by not being invaded by their neighborhood rivals.
chasd00 2 hours ago [-]
> North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why?
Attacking North Korea means millions of starving brainwashed uneducated refugees flooding into China. China will make any deal to avoid that nightmare, that (and Seoul’s destruction) is why no one bothers with North Korea.
827a 4 hours ago [-]
I genuinely do not understand where this take is coming from.
The incentives for having a nuclear program have not changed. Ukraine did not have nukes. Crimea, as a part of Ukraine. Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan. Vietnam. Libya. None of these countries had nukes. They paid for it.
What happened today isn't only not a "massive" change to the status quo, as you seem to think it is. Its so much less significant than what happened to the rest of those countries I just listed. Yet, you used the word "massive". Why? I have no idea.
Iran did not learn any new lessons yesterday. Nothing they didn't already know. The US does not want them to have nukes. We've done everything short of boots on the ground to stop them from having them. They should still want them. They're correct, in the defense of their territorial sovereignty, to want them. But, we'll keep stopping them. That's how it was in the 2000s, the 2010s, its how it is the 2020s, and it's how it will be in the 2030s and 2040s. They keep trying, we keep stopping them. The incentives haven't changed. Nothing has changed. Yet you doomers keep thinking this is the end of the world or its WW3. It isn't.
If anything has changed: Iran just learned that something which took them a decade of development, cost hundreds of lives, and billions of dollars, was stopped by a couple planes from a country half a world away at basically no cost to us, without barely a thought or care. Fox News was tracking these B2s on ADSB a day before they hit Iran; it didn't matter. That's how ahead the US is. The asymmetry here should scare the shit out of them, and the world; that they will never have a conventional nuclear program because they're so unbelievably outmatched and outgunned that if our President has one bad nights sleep he could just wipe out half their country, half of any country, with no congressional authorization, no checks, no balances, just launch a plane and they're dead. Maybe this pushes them to non-conventional means of obtaining nukes; but it shouldn't significantly change their desire for wanting one in the first place. They've always wanted nukes.
sanderjd 3 hours ago [-]
Ukraine had nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union. They were persuaded to get rid of them.
I don't think you're disagreeing with me, you're just comparing to a more recent status quo.
Nuclear non-proliferation was based on the idea that small countries didn't need their own nuclear weapons, because they could ally with a superpower / bloc with nuclear weapons, and piggy-back on those superpowers not wanting to go to war, to avoid nuclear confrontation.
It is true that some countries, like Israel and North Korea, never bought that idea, and went ahead and got their own nukes.
That those countries who didn't buy into non-proliferation have fared better in the last couple decades than the ones on your list who have been attacked with little repercussion, is exactly the point.
Ukraine was willing to give up its nukes decades ago, now it's clear they shouldn't have. Iran was willing to enter into a non-proliferation agreement a decade ago, now it's clear they shouldn't.
But this is a much worse equilibrium than if we could have actually made non-proliferation work. Now every small country should clearly be trying to build nuclear weapons, if they can. And I think that's bad.
chasd00 2 hours ago [-]
Iirc Ukraine had nukes but no way to use them. They didn’t have the keys so to speak so they were basically a storage location. The nukes were worthless as a deterrent.
sanderjd 9 minutes ago [-]
It would have been easier to solve that problem than to spin up an entire nuclear weapons capability from scratch.
827a 3 hours ago [-]
> Nuclear non-proliferation was based on the idea that small countries didn't need their own nuclear weapons, because they could ally with a superpower / bloc with nuclear weapons
There are dozens of examples of denuclearized countries that are, today, at near-zero risk of being attacked or invaded, possibly because of their political and economic relationship with the United States. Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, many others, these are all countries that do not have nukes, have a great political and economic relationship with the US, and are currently at 0% risk of attack or invasion by our shared enemies (ok, you can put Taiwan at slightly higher than 0%).
Ukraine never had this kind of relationship. They tried to play both sides with their denuclearization agreement; that's what screwed them. Other countries picked a side when they denuclearized.
Statistically: There are, I believe, zero examples of a US political or economic ally being attacked or invaded, regardless of their nuclearization status, post-Vietnam. The only example of anyone who is remotely close to this is Taiwan, and even that's very far away from igniting.
voytec 2 hours ago [-]
> Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, many others (...) have a great political and economic relationship with the US, and are currently at 0% risk of attack or invasion
I'm sorry, are you from the past? You literally listed Canada which Trump threatened with invasion.
The U.S. has no stable economic relationship with any country under the current administration and won't regain the trust for years or decades to come.
There's just these two quite different non-economic relations - not relationships - Israel and Russian Federation. The latter may even be Trump's hallucination but I'm giving him a benefit of the doubt. He finds common language with warmongering dictators.
jonp888 3 hours ago [-]
Analysed logically the aim of your post was a positive message that pushes back against "doomers", yet somehow it left me more depressed about the utter futility and meaningless of existence than any other comment I've read so far.
sanderjd 3 hours ago [-]
There is nothing "doomer" about my comment that they replied to! It's just true (as this person agrees) that everyone has the incentive to build their own nuclear weapons, because they can't trust anyone else to protect them. That's just how it is now. And maybe non-proliferation was always a pipe dream. But I do feel like we could have given it a better go!
But it's also just how it is that the biggest countries already had huge nuclear stockpiles. I'm not convinced that small countries trying to build them also is a huge contributor to that base level of risk. But we've been surviving in that state of the world for about three-quarters of a century now.
It can't be the case that being open-eyed about the current state of things is "doomer", right? I'm not speculating impending future doom, just describing current conditions as I see them.
rawgabbit 3 hours ago [-]
#5. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia will look for a proxy to fight Iran. China to determine if it should back Iran or not.
Timeline of previous events
2006 – Hezbollah–Israel War: Iran arms Hezbollah during the 34-day conflict with Israel.
2010 – Stuxnet cyberattack: U.S. and Israel deploy malware against Iran’s Natanz uranium centrifuges.
2020 – Assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani by Trump who orders drone strike that kills the IRGC Quds commander
2021 – Houthi–Saudi Escalation: Iran-backed Houthis use drones and missiles against Saudi Arabia.
2022 – Iran supplies thousands of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones to support Russia’s war in Ukraine and transfer technology to Russia
2023 – Iran-backed Hamas conducts large-scale attack against Israel who responds with major military operations in Gaza.
2025 – Israel and the US bomb Iran’s nuclear sites
3 hours ago [-]
nivertech 5 hours ago [-]
Watch the last episode of SILO.
> Dan is a congressman, and what journalist Helen really wants from him is information. She’s particularly interested in a “dirty bomb”—particularly, whether the rumors of one exploding in New Orleans are real, or merely fabricated to advance a war between America and Iran. Dan doesn’t answer, instead choosing to leave. It’s all vague, but it gives the viewer a chance to piece some details together: It was likely the bomb and the escalation of a war between America and Iran that led to the creation of the silos.
A liberal Israeli friend has told me on a few occasions that Iran is one of the safest places in the Middle East for Christians and Jews to live, work, and raise families as long as they don’t publicly protest against the Iranian government.
I have no way of knowing if my friend is correct about this, but with the conflicting news broadcasts in the USA the situation is as confusing as hell. Off topic, but I have started finding news shows on the Internet from different countries like Singapore to try to figure out some semblance of truth about the world.
bearjaws 9 hours ago [-]
That is an absurd take.
Your friend's statement, that religious minorities in Iran are safe as long as they don't protest, is basically like a situation of domestic abuse.
An abuser might claim their partner is free and happy, as long as they follow the rules and don't speak out. The home may appear peaceful to outsiders, but this "peace" is maintained through fear, control, and the constant threat of violence for any perceived transgression.
hkpack 9 hours ago [-]
> The home may appear peaceful to outsiders, but this "peace" is maintained through fear, control, and the constant threat of violence for any perceived transgression
Isn’t it exactly like the present day USA? Where ethnic minorities can be taken out by masked militia and disappear in a concentration camp without any due process for any reason?
bearjaws 7 hours ago [-]
You know who Kilmar Armando Ábrego García because America is still quite far from being Iran.
I can't tell if you are even serious to draw the comparison, if you get disappeared in Iran there is literally nothing to help you.
prh8 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, it is, but HN is about as toxic red as Blind, just masked by lots of technical arrogance
kyrra 8 hours ago [-]
Can you give some context here? You are saying something pretty wild.
Eextra953 7 hours ago [-]
Look up the situation in Los Angeles, where a mix of ICE agents and masked unmarked men are targeting Hispanic neighborhoods and taking anyone they believe isn't a citizen (brown). There's been several cases of citizens being taken and detained for weeks. Recently, there's been videos of these men roaming in cars with license plates removed. These men refuse to identify themselves. Its an extremely alarming situation which has, at least in my feeds, not received nearly enough attention.
To extend this admittedly awful analogy domestic abuse can be preferable to being murdered.
beepbooptheory 8 hours ago [-]
As opposed to what though? Serious protests are always met with threats of violence. We had snipers pointed at us just the other day as we marched over here in the USA. I have seen, in person, reporters beaten, passerbys bleeding out on the street, I've had my entire neighborhood bombed with gas...
Perhaps you have a point but it can only be one of degree! Or perhaps we can try to think of a single state that does not maintain itself through violence?
nivertech 9 hours ago [-]
> Iran is one of the safest places in the Middle East for Christians and Jews to live, work, and raise families
It is only somewhat safe for token minorities, tiny pockets of remaining Jews, native Christians: Armenians and Assyrians, but not Parsis (Persians who escaped Islamization) or Mandeans (an ancient gnostic sect)
Non-native Christians (i.e. Iranians who converted to Christianity) are severely persecuted. Same for various heterodox sects / offshoots of Islam like Baháʼís, Ismailis, Ahmadis, Yazidis, Shabakis, Yarasanis, etc.
Large non-token minorities (like Azeris, Kurds, Balochi, Arabs) are persecuted. Non Shias are unable to get a government jobs. According to some demographic estimations Persians per se are a minority in Iran, which would make it an apartheid state
Gays are forced to undergo gender reassignment surgeries
Women …
> A liberal *Israeli* friend told me several times that Iran ____
Thinking critically, what makes your so-called "liberal" Israeli friend an authority on Iran? Are they a recent Jewish immigrant from Iran? Do they speak Farsi? Are they an academic researching Iran? Do they serve in military intelligence or the Mossad (or not-Mossad)?
tim333 9 hours ago [-]
I travelled in Iran a bit. I'd say it's pretty safe as long as you don't protest the government or contradict their religious views. My mum is a Bahai and deals with quite a lot of Iranian Bahais who get imprisoned, killed etc for believing in the wrong version of god. Bahaism is kind of an offshoot of islam and are generally more tolerant and less violent so they get killed as heretics by the lovely islamists.
gspencley 10 hours ago [-]
One way to get some insight into this is to look at the demographic break down of Iran pre and post 1979 revolution.
Pre-1979, per the 1976 census, Iran had a Jewish population of 62,258 (0.2%). Post-revolution it immediately fell to ~9k, where it has remained - at least until the last census in 2016 (0.0% representation).
While Christian representation didn't decline by the same amount, it took a sharp decline as well. Pre revolution (1976) saw a Christian representation of around 0.5%. 30 years later (2006 census) it was 0.2%.
What conclusions you should draw from that are open to interpretation... and when it comes to life in the Middle East and North Africa, you can also draw relative comparisons (is Iran worse or better for these groups?). But it's usually not a good sign when the population of an ethic or religious minority takes a sharp and sudden decline.
throw310822 9 hours ago [-]
In the case of the Jewish population, Israel is relatively close, with a comparatively higher standard of living and free entry, and there is a strong incentive for Jews to emigrate there even in the absence of hostility or outside pressure.
nivertech 9 hours ago [-]
It’s not close - Israel is an island, you can’t drive or fly from Iran to Israel … yet
The Iranian Jews had to immigrate via another countries, I guess via Europe. Also boys had first to serve in the army to earn right to travel outside Iranian borders
EvgeniyZh 9 hours ago [-]
Iran has official discrimination against both ethnic and religious minorities.
On the other hand, Jews had to leave the Muslim countries both in Northern Africa and the Middle East, with the total Jewish population there shrinking from hundreds of thousands to hundreds. Compared to that, Iran, from which only 70-90% of Jews left, looks not that bad. However, there were testimonies that members of Jewish families aren't allowed to leave the country all together, so I'm not sure if everyone is staying there at will.
frollogaston 6 hours ago [-]
As with most religious minorities in the Mid East, this protection is conditional and can also go away on its own at any time. Same kinda goes for Israel but at least it's more stable.
mathgradthrow 8 hours ago [-]
it seems to be a pretty safe place to be mossad.
foobarian 9 hours ago [-]
> one of the safest places in the Middle East
Added emphasis
nickpsecurity 4 hours ago [-]
I know a missionary that serves Iranians. The country is so hostile to Christians that the main, missions strategy is to reach Iranians outside of Iran. Then, they go back in and maybe talk to their own people. Eventually, they get ejected or something worse happens to them, too. There's always a narrow window where people can hear or share the Gospel. Then, discipleship in a high-persecution regime is usually done in secret churches whose meetings are even more difficult.
Under such regimes, the hope is that a sprinkle of people here and there come to know Christ. They immediately have eternal life with forgiveness of sins. Over time, as they share Christ and His Word, more lives will transform as a side effect of the sanctification process. As they do, and people witness it, hearts and minds might change over time in a way that changes the whole country (or its leadership).
bamboozled 9 hours ago [-]
As long they’re not women who don’t want to cover their head in rags , they’ll be fine ?
gosub100 6 hours ago [-]
as long as they dont get raped, or refuse to wear their hijab
crossroadsguy 17 hours ago [-]
As someone who absolutely hates American bullying of a hegemony. This is one case where I believe people of Iran might come out beneficial of it. In the long term? I am not so sure.
But will that happen? I doubt it. A country like America likes authoritarian regimes that like to listen to America. So Iranian things in the best interest of America would be the same theocracy but docile to America at least in the near future (or worse a full fledged military dictatorship which they anyway installed once).
However I just hope/dream (and it's too much of a hope) for the sake of Iranian people - it ends up getting a democracy after all (maybe).
However there is one thing clear - there is no rule based foreign relations, business, diplomacy anymore in this post truth world of ours. It's plain simple - you look after your own hind lest you find someone is at the door wanting to take it; might be an ally just as well.
A side note: I can't thank four of my country's ex PMs [0] enough that they ensured we had nukes inspite of stringent sanctions from other nations which ironically, among them, almost all already had nukes :D
The point is - we wish there were no nukes in our heating beautiful world; but tough luck, so you better get your own and get it soon.
[0] esp. Indira Ghandhi; also, probably the only head of sate that actually succeeded in "selling freedom" thing. Something America specialises in and uses as a premise to routinely reduce various parts of the world to rubble. A positive outcome of such endeavours - its defence industry getting push from it and of course it goes about trying to re-build it, giving push to other of its industries, half or quarter way and then finds other sundry places to subject to this routine.
koevet 16 hours ago [-]
But wasn't Iran already docile to America? Sure, it wasn't a crystal clear ally like Saudi or the Gulf states, but behind the anti-Zionist propaganda and "evil US" blabbering, there were decades of backchannel negotiations, regional pragmatism, and even moments of cooperation — especially when mutual interests aligned, like in post-Taliban Afghanistan or the fight against ISIS.
slv77 8 hours ago [-]
Iran sponsored insurgents in Iraq and provided the training and means to build explosively formed penetrators that killed 196 US troops:
Other than a brief thaw in relations in 2015 there is nothing that would suggest that Iran’s anti-US rhetoric is for domestic consumption and for show.
baxuz 5 hours ago [-]
You mean troops from occupying forces that engaged in an illegal war to overthrow the government, based on lies about WMDs, who killed over 120,000 civilians?
As far as I'm aware, you don't get to project military force 8000 miles away and then complain about killed soldiers. Which has been the US' favourite past time since the 60s.
daveguy 7 hours ago [-]
> explosively formed penetrators that killed 196 US troops...
Well, it's a good thing Trump completely neutralized retaliatory action against US troops. /s
slv77 7 hours ago [-]
I’m not arguing for or against the merits of the recent strikes. I am disputing the notion that Iran’s anti-US stance is purely rhetoric for domestic consumption.
One of the arguments against limited strikes against the Iranians was that it would be simply stirring up the hornets nest and things spiraling out of control.
daveguy 7 hours ago [-]
I agree. I was pointing out that these anti-US-troop actions by Iran were related to prior conflicts / actions by the US. There was unlikely any consideration to downstream reactions which will endanger our troops. Completely short-sighted warmongering.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
America and the broader west (and even much of the not-west) has been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades. A nuclear armed Iran means much the middle east, which considers Iran a dire enemy, would feel compelled to immediately launch their own nuclear weapons programs.
fakedang 16 hours ago [-]
They could if they wanted to acquire nuclear weapons though. The Saudis explicitly funded the Pakistani nuclear programme with the option of access to nukes if required.
jraby3 7 hours ago [-]
No way is KSA helping Iran.
crossroadsguy 16 hours ago [-]
No. Iran vehemently wanted nukes and the West (and its strong/rich local vassal states) vehemently didn't want Iran to have the nukes and Iran knew that and the West knew that Iran knew that. So no. (In fact SA has quite some money into Pakistani nukes; not sure what's the "access" agreements :P)
frollogaston 6 hours ago [-]
I'm tired of hearing that American support for Israel is about supporting our hegemony, or about bullying for oil. This myth actually gives this relationship more support among Americans.
The truth is it doesn't benefit us at all, we simply do it because pro-Israel lobbies have a ton of power. Trump even diverted resources from Ukraine for this, and that war is really about US hegemony even though there's a moral aspect to it too.
fakedang 16 hours ago [-]
> The point is - we wish there were no nukes in our heating beautiful world; but tough luck, so you better get your own and get it soon.
Exactly my thoughts. We were absolutely blessed to have been developing our own nuclear capabilities at a time of intense international scrutiny. We were sanctioned to oblivion by the West for that until they realized (after Pakistan too developed their nukes, comfortably) that you can't simply ignore the elephant in the room. And we paid for it dearly too (with the assassinations of leaders in our nuclear programme).
At this point, it should be expected of any rational self-serving sovereign nation that they should develop nukes, especially if they have a record of historical non-aggression. South Korea, modern Japan, the EU (especially those in direct threat of Russia like Poland)... I don't expect Germany to grow a pair to not rely on the US, any time in the near future.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
"A country like America likes authoritarian regimes that like to listen to America."
I dunno. America seems to like Norway, and they don't seem particularly authoritarian.
dudefeliciano 15 hours ago [-]
you forgot that they're white, they don't factor in in this conversation
hotmeals 15 hours ago [-]
If the Norwegians or anyone for that matter got uppity...
vbezhenar 16 hours ago [-]
Trump will declare that his BIG BEAUTIFUL BOMBS won the war, nuclear facilities are no more. Israel cannot claim otherwise, because that would be against big brother. Iran will continue covertly making nuclear bomb, but that will take more years, and will continue peace talks for now. Trump will get Nobel peace prize for peaceful bombing and will be happy.
rocqua 15 hours ago [-]
There's a whole escalation you are forgetting. Iran will retaliate, to which the US wilk respond. That yields a situation where neither side can back out, but neither is putting enough pressure in the other to force them to stop.
The way through seems limited to:
- ground invasion
- nuclear annihilation
- regime change (no guarantee of success)
If the regime change doesn't work, the options are horrible. And remember that the current Iran regime is the result of a US backed regime change, which allowed radical elements to mobilize hatred against the US.
crossroadsguy 15 hours ago [-]
As if Israel has been giving two flying fracks about what big brother would think. Besides Israel as a nation is too cunning to not be able to subdue someone as dumb and facetious as Trump with flattery alone.
Trump getting Nobel - yes, knowing who all the Swedes have given it to I won't be surprised at all.
rightbyte 8 hours ago [-]
Norway's parliament vote who to give Nobel's peace price, not the comittee.
VikingCoder 7 hours ago [-]
"The U.N. nuclear watchdog says there's 'no increase in off-site radiation levels' after US strikes on Iran nuclear sites"
If we blow up a place filled with enriched uranium, shouldn't there be an obvious spike in off-site radiation levels, as the uranium settles to the ground?
Meaning, isn't this damning evidence that there was no enriched uranium?
timhigins 7 hours ago [-]
Based on satellite imagery from Maxar and reports from Iran state news agencies, they moved the uranium in about 50 trucks to a “safe location” [1].
From Reuters [2]:
> Hassan Abedini, deputy political head of Iran's state broadcaster, said Iran had evacuated the three sites some time ago.
> "The enriched uranium reserves had been transferred from the nuclear centres and there are no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots," he told the channel.
Those sites getting blown up was kinda obvious. I would have been shocked if they didn't move everything once Israel sneak attacked them.
perihelions 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
diggan 7 hours ago [-]
It's a quote from an individual, which is rightly unedited regardless of what propaganda that specific individual is trying to put out. Reuters does the same with US politicians who are obviously lying, or any other statements from people. It's not their job to only share "what is truth" but to share different perspectives regardless of their biases.
Usually subjective opinions are left for opinion-pieces, which that article isn't.
Another example from the same article, first they write:
> "The strikes were a spectacular military success," Trump said in a televised address. "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated."
Then afterwards they write:
> However, Mohammad Manan Raisi, a lawmaker for Qom, near Fordow, told the semi-official Fars news agency the facility had not been seriously damaged.
That's how real journalism works, find people with perspectives from both sides of the coin, and let them say theirs. Obviously one of them are correct, but it's not Reuter who will put down the foot and tell you what to believe.
carefulfungi 6 hours ago [-]
The best of journalism is about presenting verifiable facts, especially when those facts are inconvenient or suppressed by the powerful. Good journalism is not about providing equal forums to all sides to spew propaganda in equally metered time.
> Good journalism is not about providing equal forums to all sides to spew propaganda in equally metered time
No one claimed this. I'm merely stating the obvious that no one is 100% impartial here, and Reuters is reporting based on what they've been able to verify.
> The best of journalism is about presenting verifiable facts
The fact is that person X said Y, and that's what they're reporting. It's not original reporting about what the quote is about, it's a quote from a person, and that they're sharing that quote means they've verified that it was said by that person.
4 hours ago [-]
thrance 7 hours ago [-]
Journalists should absolutely fact-check the claims they put in their articles. If they don't, you end up with a president like Trump, shamelessly lying anytime he speaks, and no one to counter his obvious lies. This, is journalism malpractice in my book.
Not saying Reuters does a particularly bad job at that btw.
diggan 7 hours ago [-]
Sure, but that isn't a claim the journalist put in the article, it's a quote from a government official, the journalist is reporting on what the person said. Editing or hiding quotes because you don't agree with it, feels more like journalism malpractice than letting quotes be unedited.
perihelions 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
diggan 7 hours ago [-]
They're sharing quotes from politicians of two countries currently being pulled into war with each other, of course most of it will be propaganda. Neither of what you read from politicians right now is in earnest and a willingness for dialogue, it's all to pull you in their direction so you support their side.
Both sides are trying to goad everyone into their side, this is obvious. But again, it is not up to independent news to report for one side more than the other, this is why quotes from both sides are unedited, as it should be if you're for independent news.
> with one objectively correct answer and one crazy one
None of this is happening with the discussions and news-reporting from today and yesterday, it's all propaganda designed to make you feel one way or another. There is no "objective truth" to be found here, just two(three) nations who want to destroy each other, having a competition who can sound the most "reasonable" in order to justify whatever comes next.
perihelions 6 hours ago [-]
> "There is no "objective truth" to be found here"
Of course there's objective truth here. This is a technical question with an uncontroversial technical answer (and that quoted physicist told us the answer).
diggan 6 hours ago [-]
If
> no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots
is a accurate picture of Iran's intention behind moving the uranium or not, is not something an expert of any sector could say for sure, unless they somehow have insider information. Not sure why you'd believe so.
rudolph9 7 hours ago [-]
The enriched uranium was reportedly moved before the bombing. As far as I know, the objective was to destroy the enrichment facilities.
trothamel 7 hours ago [-]
The uranium is supposed to be uranium hexaflouride, right? That's solid at room temperature, so if the mountain collapsed onto it you would't expect to see it off-site.
lolinder 7 hours ago [-]
Possibly. It could also be evidence that the bombs didn't really do their job. Either they missed or the bunkers were fortified enough and/or deep enough to avoid even the bunker busters.
bigyabai 7 hours ago [-]
In Iran's defense, there was credible OSINT[0] warning of the B-2s taking off 12+ hours in advance of the strike. Iran knows what a GBU-57 is, the writing was pretty clearly on the wall that a strike was imminent.
It's possible (though not guaranteed) that they simply relocated the enriched uranium before the attack.
That one was counterintelligence deliberately placed in OSINT to confuse Iran. The B-2's that flew west over CONUS in daylight, in plain view, were decoys on a wrong timing.
Yes, that too. It was in newspapers hours before the attack, so there's no way Iran didn't know it was coming.
throwawaybob420 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
athrowaway3z 4 hours ago [-]
Be warned the false dichotomy between whether this is a good or bad. It lets proponents use more arguments than they should.
The relevant question is: Why was it necessary to bomb Iran right now?
ajkjk 4 hours ago [-]
"why was it" and "was it" both, though...
justinbaker84 4 hours ago [-]
I predict a false flag cyber attack on the US that is supposed to whip us into a frenzy for war in Iran.
didntknowyou 4 hours ago [-]
that's a loaded question, as if everyone had agreed bombing was needed at any stage
cakealert 17 hours ago [-]
Iran never had the deterrent North Korea had. And by being a theocracy they heavily skewed any threat calculus against themselves.
What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all.
I suspect that after their nuclear program was discovered and set back they fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy and convinced themselves they could repurpose it as leverage. But they are a theocratic regime and their messaging (whether genuine or not) made that a non-viable option in reality.
This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you? Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first if you can't destroy their capability by other means. What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
epolanski 16 hours ago [-]
> Iran never had the deterrent North Korea had.
I feel very conflicted about what's happening.
On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
> What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
margorczynski 15 hours ago [-]
> Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
This is the key. People talk some crazy stories about Iran being a theocratic state whose life mission is destroying Israel but the fact is they don't want to end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat.
And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US. So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
elcritch 14 hours ago [-]
> end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat.
You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not.
Syria was embroiled and toppled by Islamic Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham backed by Turkey. Libya was due to civil war. Several of these conflicts were funded by Iran as well.
You can go down the list. Please study at least some basics on the region.
> So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Theocracies can be unpredictable. Also they could provide dirty bombs to their proxies in the region.
ExoticPearTree 12 hours ago [-]
Just to set the story straight:
- Libya was bombed primarily by France and then other NATO countries for no good reason. And from a functioning dictatorship it is a failed state.
- Syria was invaded by Turkey/US right after the civil war started.
In the world we all live in you need to have powerful deterrents so that the US/France/UK/NATO will not dare to bomb you for whatever reason they feel "justified" to do.
In an extreme, I think every country should have a lot of nukes so other countries can mind their own business.
BrandoElFollito 10 hours ago [-]
> In an extreme, I think every country should have a lot of nukes so other countries can mind their own business.
The problem is that countries tend to assume that the neighbors are also their business.
ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago [-]
Well, if every of your neighbors would have a big bad bomb, you will more inclined to mind your business. But if only you have a big bad bomb, then most likely you will have opinions about what your neighbors should do.
_old_dude_ 8 hours ago [-]
> Libya was bombed primarily by France and then other NATO countries for no good reason
The old mantra of bombing for peace and having sex for virginity, no?
looofooo0 11 hours ago [-]
Forget Ryssian involvment in Syria and Libiya!
ExoticPearTree 11 hours ago [-]
I did not forget that. But the Russians banked on the opportunity after the fact. They did not bombed them because they did not like their leaders just because.
scotty79 11 hours ago [-]
> other countries can mind their own business
Right. Because nothing says "I can mind my own business." like nuclear weapons being at most one coup from being launched at someone, possibly you.
People thought nuclear weapons are a defensive deterrent but what war in Ukraine showed us they are actually offensive weapons that deter anyone from defending to strongly when you attack them with your conventional forces.
Both russia and USA used their nuclear weapons in that manner for the last few decades. It's time to call the thing that quacks what it is, a duck.
ExoticPearTree 11 hours ago [-]
> Right. Because nothing says "I can mind my own business." like nuclear weapons being at most one coup from being launched at someone, possibly you.
You're saying not all countries should be able to have powerful weapons just because there might be a coup. Who decides that? You? Me? A random guy on the street? A random bureaucrat from a random country?
There are very few people who think they can win a nuclear exchange. And somehow I don't think a random guy in Africa or the Middle East is so sure about it that it risks launching nukes at its neighbor(s).
scotty79 5 hours ago [-]
> You're saying not all countries should be able to have powerful weapons just because there might be a coup.
Of course. How is that controversial?
> Who decides that? You?
Of course. I decide what I believe to be right. And in practice the countries that get to have nuclear weapons are the countries that got nuclear weapons. Not because they deserve it or should have it. Just because they got it. Which makes France, USA and Israel some of the countries that get to have nukes and Iran one of the countries that don't get to have nukes.
> There are very few people who think they can win a nuclear exchange.
You mistake humans for rational actors. Have you heard what the stance of russia is for example? "What's the use for the world if there's no russia in it." Basically if they can't do what they want, they think world deserves to get nuked into oblivion.
ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago [-]
> Of course. How is that controversial?
Take the US for example: if the president, secretary of defense and probably the head of the joint chiefs decide it is OK to nuke half the planet because "reasons" - how is that different from a traditional coup?
> Which makes France, USA and Israel some of the countries that get to have nukes and Iran one of the countries that don't get to have nukes.
Power is always taken, never given. Following your rationale, Iran should do whatever to get its hands on some nukes real fast.
> Have you heard what the stance of Russia is for example?
Have you heard of peacocking? If it were actually true, they would have nuked the world way before probably me and you were born.
roenxi 14 hours ago [-]
> You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not.
The comment didn't suggest that exactly.
> One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation?
Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership. They've probably figured out retaliation is a possibility here - if this is Israel's defence when they aren't even being threatened, imagine what they will do in their defence when the Iranians actually do something directly! Even if the Iranians are legitimately stupid at some level the campaign of missile strikes must have registered that they are vulnerable to missiles.
elcritch 12 hours ago [-]
That’s the point of my comment. Israel and several other nations like Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc have all been undergoing attacks by Iranian funded proxies for decades.
ivape 12 hours ago [-]
Why do you think that’s true? You can take an average person globally and more or less realize it takes very little to make someone anti-Israeli foreign policy. It doesn’t take some large brainwashing operation. In fact, one could argue the propaganda is coming from a side that wants to paint a narrative that there is this huge operation against Israel when in reality an average 16 year old in America can spot the bad actor in a situation rather quickly (yes, that’s genz , the supposedly “brainwashed” dumbasses).
Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2). They are making trauma informed decisions, and can never be trusted to do so alone because it’s actual trauma.
The biggest myth is that Israel is a first world country but there’s no evidence of it. Buildings and infrastructure do not make you a first world country (behold China). Any country that is that brutal will never meet the criteria, it’s a third world country that is new and learning just like every other third world country.
Blood-thirst (blood-rage? They see red.) is an understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025. We need things to change over the next 20 years. They do not know how to manage life due to just how intense their historical trauma was. There’s no one over there with a cool head and clinically there wouldn’t be (how do you just act normal after the holocaust? You can’t.)
The failure of the Trump admin is unique and unlike any other administration. It is was once accepted that Israel is not level headed (again, not an insult, one cannot be balanced if one emerges through hellfire) and cannot dictate foreign policy. Trump just said “fuck it, go ahead traumatized child, do as you please” - this was pure insanity.
Love is protecting your brothers and sisters from themselves (my brothers keeper). The world did not get safer, where are the cooler heads in the room?
11 hours ago [-]
elcritch 11 hours ago [-]
> Why do you think that’s true? You can take an average person globally and more or less realize it takes very little to make someone anti-Israeli foreign policy. It doesn’t take some large brainwashing operation. In fact, one could argue the propaganda is coming from a side that wants to paint a narrative that there is this huge operation against Israel when in reality an average 16 year old in America can spot villainy rather quickly.
Because I lived there for 6 months during a study abroad I randomly ended up doing. I'd never had a Jewish or Muslim friend before going. Living there I had Palestinian and Jewish neighbors. I had to read lots of books on both sides of the topic and write papers on them. Along with deep conversations with both Israelis and Palestinians. Admittedly more with Israelis than Palestinians. Though I do have some fond memories of Palestinians.
The experience forced me out of my previously much more sheltered technology and American centric world view which is what I'd say was your somewhat average 16 year old American's viewpoint, if on the more liberal atheistic side at the time. I likely would've been convinced of the same things as yourself when I was younger and more naive and saw the headlines I do now.
That said, I'm not pro-Netanyahu or many of the things he does. He's a hardliner.
> Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2).
You're not wrong. They're also a resilient people. Remember it's not just WWII, but most Israeli's, their parents and grand parents have also grown up with constant war or thread of war.
It does affect psychology when many neighboring groups like Iran and Hamas not only want to destroy your state but also want to kill all Jews. That's their public official positions. It's not just rhetoric either as they routinely attack. Ultimately Palestinian leaders and political groups have never wanted peace with Israel from everything I've studied, and neither does Iran.
Finally Israel was making progress towards peace with the Abraham accords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords) which Trump helped negotiate. Some scholars I've read believe this is part of what led to Hamas's October 7th attacks as they would loose influence if Arab nations started making peace with Israel.
> Bloodthirst is understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025.
It's easy to throw such statements around. However, look at the state of most of the region. What Israel is doing is tame compared to some of the atrocities occurring but which don't make regular news.
more-nitor 10 hours ago [-]
> What Israel is doing is tame compared to
this.
even though some Israel's actions are spooky (targeted-exploding walkytalkies?), they're at least designed to minimize civilian deaths (or at least they're trying)
But... Iran and their ilks (eg. Hamas)? they not only don't give a shit, but actively seek to kill civilians with maximum brutality (baby beheadings, killing & parading even with non-israeli bodies)
ivape 6 hours ago [-]
Can you explain to us what the genocide in Gaza is? I need a thorough explanation of the images I see out of there. What the hell is 50k dead and ghetto camp conditions?
“Tame”
Either you have no respect for my eyes or brain or I am truly an idiot. Write blog articles explaining how what we see and hear is bullshit and post it here please, we’ll assess.
1200 != 50,000
But here is the true mind fuck, 1200 != even one innocent.
Barbaric != Tame
So we march people down from the North to the South, level the area, and then logistically starve them? Tame. Do you know how the Americans marched the Native Americans to death? We’re all fucking idiots to you right?
HN is just subset of society. You’ve got everyone here, including Israeli apologists. Plenty of Jewish developers too. You don’t have to live or die by your “team” when they are literally fucking wrong about this.
Your typical educated American does not even attempt to defend most American policy since the end of WW2 (there’s literally not a single right thing America did). Maybe we’re lucky that we get to have such clear heads about it finally, and I hope the same for those on the wrong side of history on this one, however long it takes.
When one realizes they were barbarically wrong is a true moment of personal and spiritual growth.
The definition of modern national pragmatism appears to be the following based on what so many apologists say:
2 wrongs == 1 right
(The only way this can be correct in anyone’s heart is if emotions have fully overtaken the person)
Let me fix that for you:
2 wrongs != 1 right
elcritch 2 hours ago [-]
> Can you explain to us what the genocide in Gaza is?
A population caught up in a horrible conflict. In part due to the choices of the leaders they've supported for decades now.
> I need a thorough explanation of the images I see out of there. What the hell is 50k dead and ghetto camp conditions?
They're the same tragedies as those from most of the other war torn areas in the region. I hate to say it, but Gaza is at the "risk of famine" while the Sudan and Yemen are in full on famine. There's also two orders of magnitude more civilians suffering in Sudan currently as well. Similarly in Yemen, which is being bombed routinely by Saudis and Americans which include innocent civilian deaths. I've not heard of one anti-Saudi protest by Muslims in the west in recent years.
Where's the constant Wester or Muslim outrage for the 100,000s or millions of civilian deaths directly caused by Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah or more throughout the region by extremist Islamists?
You can also find the recent videos of interviews with Palestinians where they praise and thank Trump for giving the food (GHF) while they curse Hamas for hoarding the food and using their children as war fodder.
Did the media also show you the videos of the Palestinians in Northern Gaza protesting Hamas for being terrorists and killing their children in March? Many of them understand who started and wanted the war. They call it war and blame Hamas.
Does that justify all the actions of Israel? No, but I also believe Israel also acts to prevent the worse from coming around. They supply water, food, and aid while the other military forces like Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc do not do that for their enemies civilians. They regularly provide bombing warnings and evacuation notices to civilians, unlike pretty much any other force in the region.
Does the IDF also have bad actors and commit war crimes as well? Yes, but most Israeli's don't want or support that.
> But here is the true mind fuck, 1200 != even one innocent.
Tell that to almost any nations at war. There's always civilian casualties. For the Israelis it's 1200 today, and in their experience it'll be another 1200 tomorrow, and 1200 the day after and so on if they did not attack back and remove Hamas. 50,000+ dead is terrible but the statistics of civilians to combatant casualties are similar to other conflicts in the region, despite Hamas being internationally known for using civilians as shields.
Where's the constant outrage for the 150,000 dead in Yemen due to the fighting there and the 227,000 dying of famine and the ghetto conditions there? The conflict in Palestine isn't that unique in the region except that the media covers Palestine far more. The double standards on display in the west are absurd and masterfully exploited by the Islamist extremists spearheaded by Iran.
ivape 46 minutes ago [-]
Callous blood-thirst. It's not righteous and no one is entitled to acting on it. I won't go any further, but you can have the last word.
10 hours ago [-]
Ntrails 12 hours ago [-]
> Trump just said “do as you please” - this was pure insanity.
I'm all for attacking Trump when justified, but given how Biden managed Gaza it is spectacularly unclear that we would expect a different outcome from Dems.
ivape 12 hours ago [-]
We can’t know for sure since we’re not God. If Biden did what Trump did, then all that would solidify is that the Israeli lobby in America is hierarchically above both parties.
I don’t think Biden would have done it. Take the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, which happened in Trump’s first term. What stable President agitates a situation like that? He was uniquely allied with Netanyahu for awhile, and Netanyahu has exclaimed that Trump is the best friend Israel ever had:
> Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership.
And Iran retaliated and actually some of it's missiles inflicted damage. We can only imagine what the damage would be if Isreal patiently waited for the Iran to feel read to attack Israel which it's always advertised as its goal. Also it already happened once. Nations of the region decided they are strong enough to attack Isreal and they did. It was bound to happen again and as the death toll in Isreal in the current conflict shows, despite pre-emptive strike damaging Iran's missile potential significantly, there's only so much you can do with defensive weapons.
In this specific context pre-emptive strike on leaders and long range attack capabilities is not perfidious, it's just about the only thing you can do that's not stupid.
Qwertious 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
roenxi 13 hours ago [-]
Is that Israel's justification for the strikes? My understanding [0] is that the rhetoric is pre-emptive defence.
One of those videos is literally titled "Iran's Ahmadinejad Keeps Up Bluster Against Israel" and another is about treaty negotiations. If countries are going to launch a military response every time a leadership figure starts blustering or negotiations don't go well we're going to be in a lot of wars.
Bluster isn't a threat that the military are going to respond to. Imagine I used the word "credible" above if you want.
sfn42 12 hours ago [-]
Iran and Israel were allies before Iran was taken over by religious leaders. Even after that, Israel tried to keep the peace hoping that reasonable people would take over again but they never did. Iran has been supplying and funding Hamas and other enemies of Israel for decades.
In my mind there is no doubt who the good guys are in that particular conflict. Iran started it decades ago for no reason other than religious hate, has kept it up until now and Iran is the one escalating.
mafuy 12 hours ago [-]
Maybe most of this is true, I don't know. I got the impression that both their governments are total shit. But you'll certainly have to agree that most of the escalation is due to Israel's action (not words) in attacking first and at a large scale.
breppp 10 hours ago [-]
not really, the escalation started on October 7th 2023, which was financed and orchestrated by Iran.[1]
Reality is Israel is run by psychopaths who would be in jail if it weren't for their their cynical use of constant war as a misdirection.
Much like the US. And Russia. And numerous other countries, some of which are still pretending to be democratic.
The entire world order is built on greed, lies, narcissistic grandiosity, and violent murder at industrial scales.
nl 10 hours ago [-]
> Israel has also been funding Hamas and other enemies of Israel.
That's not what this article says. To quote:
> Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
> Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.
> Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.
gitremote 9 hours ago [-]
The Times of Israel article's title is "For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces". The article's lede is "For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group."
You are not understanding what the article is saying, because you're mixing up different Palestinians. Palestine has a left wing party, the Palestine Authority, and a right wing party, Hamas. The Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, recognizes the state of Israel and wants a two-state solution that also establishes a Palestinian state. Hamas does not recognize the state of Israel and wants to destroy it. Netanyahu is against the Palestinian Authority because he's more against giving legitimacy to Palestinian statehood than he's against war. He funded Hamas to delegitimize Abbas/Palestinian statehood/two-state solution/peace.
jraby3 8 hours ago [-]
The PA still uses a pay to slay program encouraging the murder of Israeli civilians within the 67 borders.
President Abbas has a PhD in holocaust denial.
Calling the PA left wing isn't accurate. It's also bent on the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.
gitremote 3 hours ago [-]
Source?
From Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The PA was founded following years of hostility. Secret meetings held in Norway in 1993 between the PLO and Israel led to the signing of the historic Declaration of Principles (the Oslo Accords), in which the two sides agreed to mutual recognition and terms whereby governing functions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967—would be progressively handed over to a Palestinian council."
> Reality is Israel is run by psychopaths who would be in jail if it weren't for their their cynical use of constant war as a misdirection.
Israeli police began investigating Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for fraud in 2016. Israeli courts indicted him for multiple cases of fraud in 2019.
You're absolutely correct on this but because of the point you're making they've downvoted you into the grey
globalnode 11 hours ago [-]
downvoted because truth hurts? lol, tough crowd here my friend.
handfuloflight 11 hours ago [-]
Cain has truly killed Abel.
belter 11 hours ago [-]
> Iran has been supplying and funding Hamas
Qatar has probably funded Hamas more than Iran and now the future Air Force One is a Qatari plane...
“Qatar has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level”
- Donald J. Trump - June 2017
"Qatar has been a key financial supporter of the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, transferring more than $1.8 billion to Hamas over the years..."
The Don in charge of the USA isn't concerned about the money goes to Hamas, he just wants his slice. Qatar knows that and can respect that.
ben_w 11 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately for basically everyone, this suggests a quick-win strategy for Iran: Bribe Trump, personally, with lots money or equivalent, to literally nuke Israel.
What's wrong with this picture? (And I don't mean in the sense of a Futurama meme of Farnsworth saying "I don't want to live on this planet any more").
matthewdgreen 10 hours ago [-]
This would absolutely work if the other gulf states weren't prepared to bribe him much, much more to prevent it. And yes, it is dismal. We are essentially run by foreign countries until January 20, 2029.
ivape 12 hours ago [-]
You don’t need a lot of funding to convince 15 year olds in Palestine to go murder. Pay closer attention to the settlements, it did more for mobilizing Israel’s enemies than any amount of psyops or military funding could ever do.
It’s very clear to me Israel has had some of the most retarded foreign policy experts for decades now. The truth is the same truth we have in the U.S, 70+ million that voted for Trump harbor a higher degree of racism that is near impossible to stop (will take generations). Israelis HATE Palestinians, and therefore they cannot make even the most obvious game theory choices on building better safety environments (finance and launch a multi decade campaign to uplift Gaza from poverty of mind, heart, and material - unless you are fucking racist and would rather live in conflict than EVER give an inch.)
scotty79 10 hours ago [-]
> It’s very clear to me Israel has had some of the most retarded foreign policy experts for decades now.
If everybody hates you anyways you eventually morph into the thing that deserves that hatred.
rusk 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
inglor_cz 11 hours ago [-]
The Islamic Republic is absolutely brutal as well.
The difference isn't in brutality. It is in the word "Islamic". That is the core of the ideological hostility of the current Iranian government towards Israel.
handfuloflight 11 hours ago [-]
What specific "Islamic" doctrines do they cite?
spwa4 10 hours ago [-]
That the islamic prophet was a slaver, slave trader, rapist, paedophile, warlord, warmonger (personally profited, in money, from the wars he caused), forced slaves to fight in wars, executed slaves for disobedience, liar (used peace treaties as weapons of war, against Jews), genocide, war criminal, ...
For example, these ayatollahs, who have forgotten more about islam than any muslim I've ever discussed with has ever known, claim that women who refuse to cover up (it was really more burning hijabs and demonstrating) can't be executed according to islamic doctrine for that, if they were young and virgins. Sounds great.
Except what they decided what this "islamic doctrine" meant was to have them raped repeatedly by soldiers ... and THEN execute them. Virgin problem solved.
Oh here is the list of credentials of khamenei, the person in charge of that. But let me guess, you "know better" and "know" this somehow isn't islam. Of course, you aren't willing to do anything about it either ...
"Khamenei's education began at the age of four, by learning the Quran at Maktab;[7] he spent his basic and advanced levels of seminary studies at the hawza of Mashhad, under mentors such as Sheikh Hashem Qazvini and Ayatollah Milani. Then, he went to Najaf in 1957,[26] but soon returned to Mashhad due to his father's unwillingness to let him stay there. In 1958, he settled in Qom where he attended the classes of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini.[7]"
handfuloflight 10 hours ago [-]
This is pure gish galloping inflammatory rhetoric designed to provoke rather than inform. But for the benefit of anyone reading, let me show how to spot bad faith arguments by fact-checking just one claim.
You say that Muhammad 'used peace treaties as weapons of war, against Jews', but the historical record shows the complete opposite, and the full story makes your accusation look absurd.
The Banu Qurayza violated the Treaty of Medina during wartime, which was considered an act of treason in violation of the constitution agreed by all citizens of Medina, including the Banu Qurayza Jews.¹
They broke their treaty obligations by conspiring with attacking forces during the siege of Medina.
But here's the part that completely destroys your narrative: *The Banu Qurayza themselves appointed Sa'd ibn Mu'adh as their judge, and declared they would agree with whatever was his verdict.*²
They chose their own judge: Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, who was from the Aws tribe and had been their ally.
And the judgment? *The verdict for the Banu Qurayza was consistent with the Old Testament, specifically based on Deuteronomy 20:12-14.*³ Sa'd judged them to execution according to Jewish law, not Islamic law.
So let me get this straight: The Jews broke the treaty, they requested to be judged by their own ally, that ally judged them according to their own Torah, and somehow this becomes Muhammad "using peace treaties as weapons against Jews"?
This is the exact opposite of what you claimed. The Jews broke the treaty, chose their own judge, and were judged by their own law.
If someone gets such a well-documented historical event completely backwards while making inflammatory accusations, that tells you everything you need to know about the reliability of their other claims.
1. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford University Press, 1956). Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)
2. William Muir, The Life of Mahomet (Smith, Elder & Co., 1861), Vol. 3, Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).
3. Deuteronomy 20:12-14 (Hebrew Bible); Barakat Ahmad, Muhammad and the Jews (Vikas Publishing, 1979).
inglor_cz 10 hours ago [-]
I certainly don't feel expert enough to discuss the entirety of Khomeini's work, upon which the Islamic Republic of Iran was founded, including its foreign policy. But he was a bona fide scholar of Islam.
handfuloflight 10 hours ago [-]
I didn't ask you to discuss the entirety of it. I also have scholarship in Islamic Studies and am curious what doctrines.
Surely you can cite one? As I haven't come across any that call for unrestricted violence against Jewish people.
Or any people, for that matter.
nailer 10 hours ago [-]
I imagine it’s the same ones perpetrators of Islamic violence everywhere else cite. I imagine you may also know.
handfuloflight 10 hours ago [-]
You say you 'imagine' there are Islamic doctrines calling for violence against Jews that 'perpetrators cite.'
Stop imagining. Cite them.
What specific verses or doctrines are you referring to? Give us the exact citations.
Because once you do, I have a very simple question for you: If those verses mean what you think they mean, why didn't Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam and Muhammad's direct companion, know about them?
When Umar took Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 638 CE, instead of slaughtering Jews, he invited them back to a city they'd been banned from for 500 years under Christian rule. He protected their religious practices and established legal frameworks for their protection.
So either:
These verses don't exist or don't mean what you think, OR the second Caliph, who learned Islam directly from Muhammad, somehow didn't understand basic Islamic doctrine.
Which is it?
Put up or shut up. Cite the specific verses you're claiming exist, then explain why Muhammad's direct successor acted in the exact opposite way.
nailer 7 hours ago [-]
No I am saying that Islamic doctrine is used to support Islamic violence against many people globally. I’m not sure why anyone would think that would be limited to Jewish people. I think the reason you limited the discussion in this way is because you are not arguing in good faith.
I have lived the last 44 years in Australia, the United Kingdom and now the United States, each of which have been victims of Islamic violence in different ways.
I understand you want me to cite specific hadiths, as I said earlier I think any Islamic scholar would already know which ones, so you’re not arguing in good faith. I want you to know I am familiar with the ‘no true scotsman’ fallacy and feel you will employ it. You have no right to demand anything from me.
As an Islamic scholar you are also familiar with the concept of dhimmis. I think the reason you didn’t mention them here is because you know Islam creating laws to treat others as second class citizens is shameful, and you did now acknowledge these because you are not arguing in good faith.
I won’t stop talking about Islamic violence because you demand I do so, you have no right to demand this of anyone and your personal beliefs deserve no special respect.
handfuloflight 8 minutes ago [-]
You just proved my entire point while thinking you were making yours.
First, you claimed there are Islamic doctrines calling for violence against Jews. When I asked for citations, you suddenly can't provide any because "any Islamic scholar would already know." This is the academic equivalent of "my girlfriend goes to another school." If these doctrines are so obvious and pervasive, citing them should take you thirty seconds, not paragraphs of deflection.
Second, you accuse me of limiting the discussion when the exact opposite happened. You made a specific claim about anti-Jewish doctrines, I challenged it, and when you couldn't defend it, YOU tried to escape by broadening it to "Islamic violence globally." I actually expanded my challenge by saying I haven't found doctrines calling for unrestricted violence against Jewish people "or any people, for that matter." You're now misrepresenting the exchange because you can't handle either version of the challenge.
Third, you preemptively accuse me of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but you're the one committing it. You claim "perpetrators of Islamic violence" cite these doctrines, but when pressed for specifics, you can't name them. That's you implying that anyone who doesn't commit violence isn't following "real" Islam, which is literally the No True Scotsman fallacy you're projecting onto me.
Fourth, you brought up dhimmis thinking it was devastating, but you just wrecked your own position. The dhimmi system was a legal framework for protection and coexistence, revolutionary for its time when other civilizations were practicing actual genocide. If Islam mandated killing Jews, why would it simultaneously create detailed legal protections for them? You literally cited evidence that contradicts your entire premise.
Fifth, your appeal to personal geography is irrelevant. Living in three countries doesn't make you knowledgable in Islam any more than living near hospitals makes you qualified to comment on surgery. You're using personal experience to avoid rigor, the exact opposite of truthful discourse.
Sixth, you claim I have "no right to demand" citations from you. In discussions in pursuit of truth, when you make factual claims, providing evidence isn't a courtesy, it's basic intellectual honesty. You don't get to make assertions about Islamic doctrine then hide behind wounded feelings when asked to support them.
Finally, you still haven't addressed Umar ibn al-Khattab. This isn't some minor historical figure, he's the second Caliph, Muhammad's direct companion, who conquered Jerusalem and immediately invited Jews back after 500 years of Christian expulsion. If Islamic doctrine mandates violence against Jews, then either:
a) these doctrines don't exist or don't mean what you claim, OR b) Muhammad's own companion fundamentally misunderstood basic Islamic teaching (which you seem to be more privvy to, despite your lack of citation)
You cannot escape this logical knot you've tied around yourself. Every byte of text you write avoiding this question proves you know your position is indefensible.
This isn't about silencing you, it's about holding you accountable for claims you cannot substantiate.
inglor_cz 10 hours ago [-]
I am not a scholar of Islam, but I am pretty sure that no core doctrine calls for the mere existence, much less outright political rule, of people called ayatollahs either. And yet here we are.
Regardless of the above, the Islamic Republic of Iran calls itself Islamic and takes the velayat-e-faqih system, developed by Khomeini, as divinely inspired.
handfuloflight 10 hours ago [-]
You now've just demolished your original argument, and here's the proof using your own words:
You just admitted that the specific system of ayatollah rule has 'no core doctrine' supporting it. You acknowledged that this particular form of clerical authority is an innovation that doesn't exist in foundational Islamic teachings. Then you say Khomeini 'developed' velayat-e-faqih as a new system.
So by your own admission: core Islamic doctrine doesn't support this specific form of clerical rule by ayatollahs; and that Khomeini had to 'develop' (i.e., invent) the velayat-e-faqih framework. So, Iran's system is based on this modern Shia innovation, not established Islamic governance models.
But your original claim was that Iran's hostility toward Israel stems from 'Islamic' ideological doctrine. You can't have it both ways, either Iran's policies flow from broadly accepted Islamic teachings, or they flow from Khomeini's specific 20th-century innovation that most Muslims reject.
You've just proven that Iran's system represents one minority sect's modern political invention, not mainstream Islamic doctrine.
You don't need to be an Islamic scholar to know there are two major branches: Sunni and Shia. If you don't know this basic distinction, you shouldn't be making claims about 'Islam' generally. If you do know it, then you're being disingenuous trying to pass off one minority Shia innovation as representative of all Islam.
inglor_cz 10 hours ago [-]
I demolished nothing. The Islamic Republic of Iran
a) considers itself Islamic,
b) it is indeed ruled by scholars of Islam,
c) bases its policy and politics on Islam.
You say that they are basically heretics and that the majority of Muslims don't agree with them. So what. I haven't said that all Muslims want to destroy Israel for religious reasons.
If I want to be extra precise, the Islamic Republic of Iran is compelled by Islam as of its own understanding to destroy Israel.
And given that there is no central authority in Islam that would issue binding declarations on what is Islam and what is Heresy, this is basically the norm in the Islamic world. Every nation and community practices Islam as it understands it, which means quite a lot of internal diversity.
handfuloflight 9 hours ago [-]
Your original claim: Iran's hostility stems from 'Islamic' ideological doctrine.
Your new claim: Iran follows 'Islam as of its own understanding' and there's no central authority to define what's Islamic.
So you've just admitted that Iran's version isn't representative of Islam generally and that there's no authoritative way to call their interpretation 'Islamic'. That every community 'practices Islam as it understands it'.
This demolishes your original point even further. If anyone can interpret Islam however they want with no central authority, then Iran's actions tell us nothing about 'Islamic' doctrine, they only tell us about Iran's political choices wrapped in religious language.
By your own logic, I could point to: Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, which is democratic and has peaceful relations with Israel. Or the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, who've normalized relations with Israel. Jordan, Egypt: these have peace treaties with Israel.
I could point to these and say they represent 'Islam as of their own understanding' just as validly as Iran does.
You've essentially argued that Iran's interpretation is just one of many possible interpretations with no special claim to authenticity. That's the opposite of your original claim that Iran's hostility flows from Islamic doctrine.
You started by claiming Iran represents Islamic teaching. Now you're saying every Muslim community makes up their own version. Pick one: you can't have both.
And you still haven't provided a single citation of actual Islamic doctrine supporting violence against Jews, which was the original challenge.
inglor_cz 9 hours ago [-]
There is no version of Islam that would be "representative of Islam generally", this is a trivial observation that you are trying to use as a cudgel.
You are engaging in an elaborate No True Scotsman fallacy.
For me, if if walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, and I will consider the Islamic Republic of Iran to be Islamic. I don't particularly care about sectarian squabbles what is geniunely Islamic or not.
handfuloflight 9 hours ago [-]
Your arguments collapsed under scrutiny. You claimed Iran's hostility stems from "Islamic doctrine" but couldn't cite a single supporting text.
You've retreated to "if it calls itself Islamic, it's Islamic," like claiming North Korea represents democracy because "Democratic" is in its name.
When you stated "There is no version of Islam that would be representative of Islam generally," you contradict Islamic tradition itself. The Prophet Muhammad, the FOUNDER of the religion said: "My community will never agree upon error" and "Allah's hand is with the congregation" (Source: Tirmidhi). This hadith establishes that consensus (ijma) of the Muslim community is authoritative in Islam.
Look, these facts remain: you admitted Iran's system is Khomeini's modern innovation. Most Muslim nations have peaceful relations with Israel. And you've cited zero Islamic doctrines supporting your claim.
This isn't about religion: it's politics in religious clothing. If Iran's position were truly Islamic, 1.8 billion Muslims would share it. They don't.
Stop conflating one country's politics with an entire faith.
breppp 12 hours ago [-]
and? did he hang homosexuals on cranes? cut the hands of thieves or rape protestors?
I am pretty sure Iran's current regime wins the brutal dictatorship game
Fluorescence 11 hours ago [-]
The Shar's CIA trained secret police, SAVAK, tortured and murdered thousands and yes, they raped prisoners.
The Federation of American Scientists reported their torture methods included:
"electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails".
breppp 11 hours ago [-]
so nothing changed then, hasn't it? except for the addition of some cruel medieval islamic punishments and the occasional intentional blinding of protestors
krzyk 12 hours ago [-]
> One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation?
Allah or Jahwe, what's the difference. Both countries are some kind of theocracies, that see infidels as inferior. If Israel has nukes, so should Iran. At least Iran is Shia, so different from the most Muslims, which are Sunni.
handfuloflight 10 hours ago [-]
> Allah or Jahwe, what's the difference.
...there is no difference. Islam and Judaism trace to Abrahamic monotheism. One through the son Isaac, the other through Ishmael.
fortran77 10 hours ago [-]
You’re not going to win an argument with someone who will always blame the Jews for all the world’s (and his personal) woes.
rajup 11 hours ago [-]
> So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid. The "existential threat" bs being peddled by a certain government is simply to give cover to illegal attacks on a sovereign nation. This is "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.
dekelpilli 8 hours ago [-]
This was Israel's thinking with Hamas - they're deterred, they're comfortable and in charge and they wouldn't do anything to jeopardise that, etc. Israel's thinking was wrong, and they've learned to believe their enemies when they say they want to destroy Israel. There isn't a country in the world that would allow their enemies, who have repeatedly stated that said country's demise is a key goal of theirs, to develop nukes if they have with the capability to stop it.
mattmaroon 3 hours ago [-]
They’re not stupid, the believe in an ideology that glorifies martyrs. If you actually believe in martyrdom nuking Israel is the sensible thing to do even knowing you’ll get it right back.
mu53 11 hours ago [-]
I think they are stupid for broadcasting the program and threatening Israel with it.
Believe people when they tell you what they are going to do. Even if Iran wouldn’t use it if they had it, threatening to use it shifts the probability for them using it.
Khomeini isn’t on Kim jong un’s level
scotty79 10 hours ago [-]
> 100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid.
I'm not sure how can you say that, now that they are dead, completely due to how they positioned themselves on the regional and global landscape.
mattmaroon 9 hours ago [-]
It can be both. You're creating a false dichotomy.
Mutual destruction makes sense when you're a death cult and the enemy is evil. Iran nuking Israel knowing full well they will get nuked back IS rational if your belief is that Allah will reward you for it in the afterlife and they do sincerly believe that.
You should read books published by reformed Islamists. Radical by Maajid Nawaz is a good one.
They profess to believe (and they are sincere) that they will be rewarded for dying killing Israelis. There's a reason that if I tell you a story about a suicide bomber blowing up a public square in political protest you do not have to wonder what religion they are. It's not because all Muslims are insane, they aren't, it's because some of them have beliefs that make that action rational.
(For example, see how Hamas will not surrender even when offered free passage out of Gaza. They'd rather Israel grind their way through the Palestinian population bomb by bomb because they think every Palestinian killed goes to heaven. If they were rational as we understand the world, they'd realize their plight is hopeless and the only thing they ensure by staying is civillian deaths.)
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
>(For example, see how Hamas will not surrender
Yup.
Hamas will fight to the last Palestinian. They could have ended the Gaza war a year ago (or more). All they have to say is: "Here are the hostages. Here are our weapons. We are now shoemakers."
Why don't they do this?
Because they would rather fight to the last Palestinian child.
Hamas has agency. They could end war any time since October 8, 2023.
mattmaroon 6 hours ago [-]
Because they are a death cult. They sincerely believe exactly what they profess, everyone who Israel kills is a martyr and goes to heaven with extra benefits.
From their perspective it’s all wins. Every bomb Israel drops sends their people to heaven and makes Israel look bad to the world.
The hardest part of conversing with a lot of people about this situation is getting them to understand the idea of a death cult. Once you accept that some people not only don’t fear death but actively seek it for themselves and their tribe, the Middle East makes a lot more sense. There’s so much evidence both in what they say (they do not hide it) and what they do but so much of the west refuses to accept it.
samjones33 3 hours ago [-]
Well said.
What I try to emphasize is that Hamas has agency. They make the decision to keep fighting, or stop fighting.
To deny Hamas agency is to dehumanize them. They have as much agency as Israel or any other actor.
And they are a death cult.
With two million Gazans between their tunnels and the IDF.
There is no way to make that nice or neat or pleasant.
8note 3 hours ago [-]
israel could also end it at any point, by not shooting, or by dissolving the whole state.
why do they not do this? israel has had the ability to end the war since before its inception.
the answer to why is no surprise, the same as hamas' reason to not surrender. the israeli goal is the disappearance of all palestinians, and hamas so happens to be made up of palestinians.
dreghgh 6 hours ago [-]
The PLO pulled out of Beirut in the early 1980s after being given guarantees from the international community that the remaining Palestinian population, unarmed civilians, would be protected both from Lebanese Christians and Israeli forces.
Then Israeli forces colluded with Christian militias to massacre Palestinians in their camps.
Hamas was never going to disarm and hand back the hostages based on "Trust me, bro".
samjones33 3 hours ago [-]
There is not a single person in the Middle East who maps the behavior of Hamas to that of the PLO in the 1980's.
Hamas is a death cult. They will fight to the last Gazan child.
They have agency. They could end the war tomorrow, or a year ago.
epolanski 13 hours ago [-]
When I said I was conflicted I meant that on one side it seems like a bad idea to give up WMDs for these countries, but it's also a bad idea for them to have them.
In Iran's case this is further compounded by their consistent anti Israeli PR and anti-Israeli militias funding.
jeswin 10 hours ago [-]
> illegal WMD
Who has "legal" WMDs - the P5? Israel is a non-signatory to NPT, meaning their WMDs are as legal as anyone else's.
echoangle 13 hours ago [-]
> And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US.
By what means are the israeli nukes (I assume thats whats meant by WMDs?) illegal? They didn't sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and I don't think spying and stealing is illegal between countries under international law.
handfuloflight 10 hours ago [-]
By the moral law of not being a hypocrite, for one.
ashoeafoot 11 hours ago [-]
They would use some proxxy and shroud the nuke in ambiguity . They have driven 45 years of proxxy war against israel and had it comingbso long its 1.5 generations family buisness now
solumunus 10 hours ago [-]
Silly! Such flippant language. Yes, it would be silly. Jihadists do “silly” things all the time. Their goals are “silly”.
dlahoda 14 hours ago [-]
afaik as i recall gov of iran says israel is little satan and says it goal to kill it.
is it crazy, sure. is it crazy story to say,no. it seems real.
margorczynski 13 hours ago [-]
The same shit NK says about SK and the USA but still I don't see nukes flying. You shouldn't mistake propaganda for the masses with the leadership being crazy fanatics.
AlecSchueler 13 hours ago [-]
Indeed, the only place I see that line being blurred today is in the US.
rusk 12 hours ago [-]
> gov of iran says israel is little satan
A pretty popular opinion these days
GlacierFox 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah it's surreal. Imagine if a terrorist group hopped the border into the USA and gleefully massacred a couple thousand people and then took loads of hostages into one of the most densely packed, boobie trapped , fundamentalist hell holes on the planet while being protected by the death-cult populace.
That place would be leveled and you wouldn't hear a peep of opposition.
ben_w 11 hours ago [-]
> That place would be leveled and you wouldn't hear a peep of opposition.
You wouldn't hear any opposition from inside the USA.
At the same time, the USA levelling the place would create a lot of opposition basically everywhere else.
This is something I bring up whenever anyone can't understand why Israel's response to Hamas' attack nearly two years ago now is likely even stronger than the USA's to 9/11 — even at best it would take a decade for the rage to dissipate, and the Israeli people are unlikely to care about the opinions of people like me for the same reason the Americans didn't.
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
>Israel's response to Hamas' attack nearly two years ago now is likely even stronger than the USA's to 9/11
I dunno about that. Iraq suffered between a quarter million and a million dead (depending on how you count). The % of those who touched a gun is low, under %10. The vast majority are civilians.
There wasn't a focused effort to bring in food, water or electricity to Iraq. A key difference is that Iraqis could leave, and hundreds of thousands did (to Syria, Jordan and other countries).
Israel's war in Gaza, messy and horrible as it is, is far (very far) more focused on Hamas than America's wars were in Iraq and Afghanistan.
ben_w 6 hours ago [-]
I should have phrased it differently, I meant the psychological response, not the military response.
GlacierFox 10 hours ago [-]
I'm British, you wouldn't hear a peep from me. I'm not Jewish either.
I think you're incorrect about the opposition. You get the loud mouth left that for some reason have aligned themselves to a terrorist organisation. But if you go down the pub and speak to real people here in the UK, it's the complete opposite. It's reflected in the most recent polling where the vast majority of the country voted for what could be described as the most right-wing party seriously operating in the UK today.
People are really getting fed up of Islamic nonsense leaking into our completely incompatible society.
matthewdgreen 10 hours ago [-]
I was alive during 9/11 and this is more or less what we did, albeit in a more distant set of countries. I don't think we came out of the experience better off.
GlacierFox 9 hours ago [-]
"albeit in a more distant set of countries"
You've said that like it's of no significance.
bavell 11 hours ago [-]
Nope, we would have sent in strike teams, special ops, etc to get the hostages out BEFORE leveling the place. Anything different would face massive opposition and carry a political death sentence for whoever gave the order.
GlacierFox 9 hours ago [-]
Oh strike teams? Like the ones they sent in to Palestine? The ones that found it impossible to get anyone back due to the density of depraved traps around every corner and every tunnel while dealing with a populace that literally wants to wipe you and cut your head off at the first chance?
"Anything different would face massive opposition and carry a political death sentence for whoever gave the order."
That's your personal opinion.
epolanski 9 hours ago [-]
Few problems with your statement are:
1) Israeli government willingly favored Hamas governing the Gaza strip and completely cut off the Palestinian authority
2) Israeli government ignored their own intelligence and even allowed money and weapons transfer from Qatar to Hamas
3) Israeli intelligence knew October 7 was gonna happen and did little to prevent it
4) While October 7 is one of the most despicable acts of crime and terror ever happened, it has not happened in a vacuum. It has happened by people who are literally living in the hell and open prison the Israelis have created for them
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
>3) Israeli intelligence knew October 7 was gonna happen and did little to prevent it
This is not considered valid in Israel.
In Israel October 7 is considered a massive failure of intelligence. No one in the top 30 of any Israeli intelligence agency that Oct 7 was going to happen.
GlacierFox 7 hours ago [-]
You have raised some interesting points that I will read about and try to make sense of.
tguvot 27 minutes ago [-]
points are bad
hamas came to power in 2006 after usa forced election (against will of PA that was afraid that hamas will win). after this usa was horrified by outcome and trained/sponsored PA to take over gaza and depose hamas. PA failed and it forces were shot/thrown from roofs/dragged behind bikes and supporters tortured into obedience.
as outcome PA ceased paying salaries to it employees in gaza and foot the bill for infrastructure/etc.
there was massive outrage in media that "hundreds of thousands of people in gaza will starve now because they have no money to buy food" that forced Israel to allow money transfers from Qatar
breppp 12 hours ago [-]
only means that their long game plan of sacrificing the palestinians for a chance at some regional/international influence is working
ta1243 10 hours ago [-]
With Israel playing right into it
breppp 10 hours ago [-]
probably the same could be said about iran now
12 hours ago [-]
FrozenSynapse 14 hours ago [-]
> it would mean mutual destruction.
some religious lunatics would deem that worthy
m000 13 hours ago [-]
> some religious lunatics would deem that worthy
That would be primarily Evangelical Zionists, seeking to hasten the end of days.
it will not be mutual. look at map and size of countries.
so it even no need to be lunatic to act some nukes.
foolserrandboy 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dlahoda 14 hours ago [-]
israel is way smaller and easier to bomb.
why would not iran gov sacrifice few million of its people to kill whole israel?
spwa4 13 hours ago [-]
Because Iran is a developed country and the Iranian population actually has a future if they take their government back from the clerics?
Hell, in the next 30 or so years oil will disappear from the middle east, and Iran is just about the only country that has a realistic shot at still having an economy after that.
HPsquared 13 hours ago [-]
Libya was pretty developed with an educated population, decent economy etc too, more developed then Iran I'd say.. look how that turned out. State collapse is no joke.
ALLTaken 11 hours ago [-]
there are private banks and operations similar to BlackWater, like Osherbrand and many others that steal, murder and take capital from the public by re-enforcing external threats and then providing "rescue" via their private fleet to extract the corrupt politicians for 30% to 70% commissions and murder away anyone hindering them. Collapse my ass, it's foreign influence and internal corruption. Like always.
Be neutral and objective, but America, Ukraine and Israel are currently the most agresively operating forces salivating over WW3. Yes, Russia is also quite brutal, but it's not going to profit from WW3 on the stock market!
Who are the PROFITEERS of this?
How can WE fight this war mongering?
Do we need to get active on the Battlefield?
Do we need to sabotage Sattelite Networks, disarm financial incentives etc. etc. to combat those who want a WW3?
Only billionaires are going to become richer from a war.
Everyone else will eat radioactive food and their DNA will be wiped out forever from the human gene pool. Seem like an Eugenic goal
libertine 10 hours ago [-]
Ukraine is being invaded in a genocidal war to try to annex them and delete them from the map, by Russia. Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum with Ukraine for them to surrender their nukes.
All while Russia is threatning with nuclear destruction of Ukraine and Western countries.
So, how the hell is Ukraine salivating over WW3 and Russia isn't LMAO
ALLTaken 9 hours ago [-]
aggressive and loaded comment you made here.
Actions provoking WW3 are as I commented. You've not made a valid counter argument and have only chose PARTISANSHIP. Which I have not.
I suggest etiquette and neutral speech before spitting hate in internet forums.
libertine 6 hours ago [-]
> aggressive and loaded comment you made here.
I disagree, but in light of your previous comment, it doesn't shock me.
> Actions provoking WW3 are as I commented.
You're wrong, they're not. You have pretty clearly chosen PARTISANSHIP by stating a country being invaded and fighting for their lives and sovereignty as the ones salivating for WW3.
It's a remarkable backward-thinking exercise. Russia is clearly:
- violating International Law, the UN Charter, and many other agreements and memoranda;
- all while threatening nuclear annihilation of Ukraine, UK, USA and other European countries;
- Attacking and destroying third countries' civilian infrastructures;
Among other atrocities and crimes.
But somehow, through magical thinking, you deem them as the victims here who have nothing to gain from this.
You are not OK with stock market gains, but you're OK with Russia stealing Ukrainian natural resources, their population, including kidnapped children?
Let me ask you this: according to your logic, were Hitler and Stalin the victims, and was Poland salivating for starting WW2?
inglor_cz 11 hours ago [-]
Libya was also tribal in its core. Nation building takes decades if not centuries and cannot be substituted by quick oil money.
Iran is not tribal, it is a fairly ancient empire with strong continuity over 2500 years. Approximately as old as Rome, but with no collapse.
Iran will almost certainly hold together if the current batch of rulers disappears. It survived even the Mongols.
rusk 12 hours ago [-]
> if they take their government back from the clerics?
They took back their government and they “gave” it to the clerics back in C20
The Iranians by and large have the state they want. Strong parallel with Irish history where independence brought about a theocratic Junta. That only went away with deeper integration into the European economy.
tech2 9 hours ago [-]
Are we forgetting the pushback against nationalisation of their oil industry, operations involving both CIA and MI6, the propaganda campaign to get rid of their elected president, and other such fun? It's not like the west didn't have some rather significant involvement and incentive here. They have what they have because the west (as is common) messed with another nation.
spwa4 6 hours ago [-]
No, nobody is ever forgetting that. It gets shoved into everyone's faces at EVERY opportunity. This is strange, because when it comes to moral failings, oil profits and corruption aren't on any serious person's radar.
Because what does get forgotten is that socialists worldwide strongly supported the revolution, from Moscow to Brazil, Berlin to New York, including supporting khomeini. With the UK's campaign "khomeini doesn't seek power, just wants to free Iran" message (spread by the BBC), and France's asylum and help. Protest marches in support of what turned out to be murderous islamists in every capital.
As for tactics: Khomeini (let's be honest here: it was Khomeini) organized snipers to shoot into the security services during a protest, provoking a battle where 89 people died ... at which point Khomeini declared that "4,000 innocent protesters were massacred by Zionists".
The protestors, whipped up by leftists did not take khomeini at his word, organized a general country-wide strike ... Khomeini organized further attacks on both his allies and the government, each time blaming zionists, never losing socialist support ... and 2 years later, now in power, Khomeini organized a massacre to "purify" Iranian society of his socialist allies, at least 3800 brutally executed, including high school students, one at most 7 years old. He has kept killing, and khamenei has continued the killings, some years 300, in the last decade more like 1000 every year.
Famously khamenei declared that "executing minors is illegal, if they're virgins". By which he meant that female prisoners are to be raped multiple times before execution. [1]
But I guess that's better than vague oil corruption and evil western influence, isn't it? Never mind that of course the revolution has totally failed Iran. They did not bring jobs, did not bring housing, did not ... in the 50 years they have in power.
Needless to say, more people died in Khomeini's purification than in every other part of the revolution combined. Hell, more people died in the last 5 years of "islamic" peace, than died in the 5 years of the revolution.
Maybe we're missing one another here but it appears you're arguing for me. Khomeini is in place _because_ of western influence/involvement, if it weren't for operation Ajax/Boot (depending on whether we're talking CIA or MI-6 naming) and the various aspects of the associated propaganda then Mosaddegh may have remained in power (I say maybe because it was quite unstable times in the early 50s Iran) and Khomeini may never have gained power.
anonnon 13 hours ago [-]
> Because Iran is a developed country and the Iranian population actually has a future if they take their government back from the clerics
They're talking about the current regime, from which it isn't clear the population will ever successfully take back their country.
mattmaroon 10 hours ago [-]
Ukraine gave up working nukes, don’t forget them.
I think the point of this bombing is to change the calculus you just mentioned. Now there’s an actual reason to not try for nukes, you may get bombed.
NK’s conventional weapons (and SK’s pointed right back at them) saved them from conflict, that’s how they got to nukes without us doing something like this. They already had mutually assured destruction from conventional weapons and proximity to an ally.
Iran’s problem is we don’t care much about anyone around them except Israel, and they already would destroy Israel if they could, so they had nobody’s head at which to aim their bullet.
NK’s government is an evil one but the Kims really like being alive and that keeps them somewhat rational. They are quite obviously not religious since they claim to be God (and surely are aware they are not), so they don’t believe in benefits to martyrdom.
Islamism is a death cult (and I mean that literally) so their actions aren’t rational as we would define the word. We can’t rely on their self-preservation instinct the way we can with the Kims.
somenameforme 9 hours ago [-]
Ukraine never had "control" of nukes. Russia was the sole producer/controller of nukes within the USSR. Those nukes were then deployed throughout the USSR, but the individual regions within the USSR never had any capability to independently launch or control those nukes. It would be akin to what will happen when the US eventually collapses and we have military bases and nukes scattered throughout the world.
Germany in that case will then briefly technically have nukes, but no ability to knowledge of how to launch or control them. Had Ukraine tried to hold onto those nukes and/or figure out how to launch them they would likely have been invaded by just about every country in the world, including the US, so they gave them up for a few bucks and some kind words.
And I strongly disagree about Iran. Pakistan is also an Islamic country (with its proper name being the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) and a nuclear power, and they haven't just decided to go nuke India who they have abysmal relations with. Religion does provide a different level of comfort with death (and Iran has a longgggggg history of enduring pain to expel invaders on top), but it does not just turn people into death cult members.
There's some irony in that if Iran had nuclear weapons their relations with Israel would likely have been much better. Because Israel wouldn't have been constantly attacking, assassinating, and otherwise doing everything they could to undermine the country. It's similar to how if North Korea didn't have nukes then South Korea, largely as a proxy of the US, would likely have been actively attacking them.
mattmaroon 9 hours ago [-]
Islamism != Islam. Plenty of Muslims (most, thankfully) are not Islamists, including Pakistan. Pakistan also does not fund terror globally (though India says they do it locally) because they do not believe they go to heaven for killing Israelis. There are a number of Muslims, including the Supreme Leader, who do. My contention was not that any muslims would nuke Israel if they had a chance, most surely would not, but it's reasonable to believe Iran would. Hamas and Hezbollah would, and Iran would love to give them the opportunity.
South Korea was never going to attack North Korea because, as I mentioned, they had plenty of conventional weapons they could easily deliver to South Korea. They had mutually assured destruction before they even tried to get nukes, that's why they succeeded. Iran does not have that yet, and must be stopped before they do.
I do now know whether this was the right way to do it by any means, and I think it's a shame that the Obama-era deal was abandoned. I think we could possibly have gotten here through peaceful measures. But we did need to get to here.
somenameforme 8 hours ago [-]
Pakistan was historically one of the most active sponsors of terrorism worldwide. [1] Their activities over time have moderated, but again exactly as I was suggesting would happen with Iran - this is likely in large part because they're not a target of various offensive activities, precisely because they have nukes. Each time you attack a country and kill people, those friends, relatives, and parts of the unconnected population do not forget nor forgive. You create the radicalism you claim to fight against.
Historically yes. They’ve since renounced it and seem to keep it confined to their region.
I don’t think there’s any evidence at all that fighting terrorism creates more terrorists than it kills, that’s just a thing people say and reality seems to show the opposite. We haven’t had waves of terror since gutting Al Queda, ISIS, etc. There’s neither research nor data to support it, people just like the way it sounds so they repeat it.
perihelions 12 hours ago [-]
> "You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked."
It's not that simple. Those countries were destined towards collapse with or without nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Syria—those are three countries that fell into catastrophic civil wars, along internal conflict lines, in power vacuums succeeding an unpopular dictator. None of those autocracies were stable in the long-term. (But a nuclear weapon is quite stable; it succeeds the falls of governments and passes on to whoever replaces them).
Deplore US' strategic stupidities all you want; but it's not the only actor with agency in the world.
Would anyone have been better off with Assad fighting a version of the 2010's civil war with nuclear weapons in his arsenal? Or Hussein, that sectarian war? Those are two men who gassed thousands of innocents with nerve agents; they wouldn't surely wouldn't hesitate long about dropping nukes.
(Can you deter a civil war with nuclear weapons?)
We could also ask who would have inherited a hypothetical Qaddafi nuke, after his fall: which Libya? There were at least three Libyas one point. ISIL governed one!
(One semantic nitpick: I don't think it's fair to say those dictators "gave up" their WMD's. With all three, their WMD programs were forcibly taken from them. In Iraq, 1981, the bombing of the Osirak reactor; and again in the 1991 Gulf War the bombing of Tuwaitha (which permanently ended Iraq's uranium enrichment). Qaddafi turned over all his nuclear materials to the USA, after being directly threatened, in the months following US' 2003 invasion of Iraq. And Assad lost his North Korean-built plutonium reactor in 2007, to an airstrike. Did anyone of these dictators have agency in those "give up WMD" choices? I think not).
southernplaces7 3 hours ago [-]
>Those countries were destined towards collapse with or without nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Syria—those are three countries that fell into catastrophic civil wars, along internal conflict lines,
For Libya and Syria, sure, but what are you talking about for Iraq? Saddam was unambiguously ousted from an internally secure position of power by a foreign invasion that followed in the wake of over a decade of heavy sanctions and no-fly zone imposure. By many accounts, Saddam had a strong base of support within his population and his rule was stable (backed by a blend of patronage and severe terror obviously) right up until the day he was ousted by vastly superior military might from outside.
While it's extremely hard to know what would have happened to his regime had he still been in power by the time of the Arab Spring and the events that caused the ouster of Gaddafi and eventually Assad, Saddam would surely have been able to stay in power at least up to then. I certainly don't imagine him having more difficulty handling an internal strife of the kind that ruined Assad's dictatorship. Except for his catastrophic miscalculation of making a long-term enemy of the US during the first, utterly pointless Gulf War, he at least showed himself to be the far more experienced and careful dictator during his rule.
slv77 9 hours ago [-]
North Korea had enough conventional artillery to level Seoul with an estimated 1M casualties. That was why Clinton decided against attacking North Korea as they moved towards building the bomb:
Iran’s deterrent was/is through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis) along with its sizable missile inventory, anti-air capabilities and strategic threats to oil and gas exports.
Israel’s investment in missile defense and the outcome of the Oct 7th attacks severely weakened Iran’s deterrence to a conventional attack.
I think the lesson should be that any nation that has enough conventional leverage to deter an attack could choose to build nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons may complement, but can’t displace other capabilities.
The US has nuclear weapons but that didn’t deter Iran from launching direct attacks on US troops in the Middle East or sponsoring insurgents in Iraq.
Nuclear weapons are also essential worthless against non nation-state actors such as Al-Qaeda.
b33j0r 4 hours ago [-]
I have become much more skeptical about DNK’s artillery after seeing the results of a frontline air-superiority stalemate in Ukraine and the Israeli campaign against Iran.
If South Korea’s coalition could establish air superiority over the DMZ and artillery range in the first moves, I think it takes you from “Seoul destroyed” to a “pretty average modern conflict.”
Hot take for sure, but war has changed.
nine_k 13 hours ago [-]
Indeed, nuclear weapons are a tricky thing. On one hand, there are nuclear non-proliferation treaties, on the other, peaceful nuclear power plants. To obtain nukes, you have to have good relationships with the current big powers, build peaceful nuclear installations, and very covertly produce the weapons based on it, while the big boys look the other way, or maybe even secretly help. That's approximately how China, India, Pakistan, and Israel obtained their nukes. (North Korea is a special case.)
Once you've obtained some nukes, complete with decent rockets to liv them, nobody is going to mess with you too badly, or try to take the nukes back; you're now a member if the club.
Japan or South Korea would likely be able to produce nuclear weapons in a few months if they needed to. I bet even Ukraine could, with its remaining nuclear plants and relatively advanced industry, and are on friendly terms with the US.
But if you made enemies with the big members of the nuclear club, and with the US in particular, they will do everything to stop you, and your situation would become much harder; that's the case with Iran.
davedx 15 hours ago [-]
Don’t forget Ukraine - gave up their nukes and look what happened
lIl-IIIl 14 hours ago [-]
They never really had them. They were in Ukraine but Moscow had control.
varjag 13 hours ago [-]
This is a minor distinction. In they end they all set off by pyrotechnic charges. Authorization sequence is nothing an industrial power can't get around.
epolanski 13 hours ago [-]
You seem to completely misunderstand why the entire world wanted Ukraine to get rid of their ICBMs.
1) They could not operate them. It isn't just about authorization sequence, it's about having all of the required electronics. You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs. All of those were in Moscow hands. Even if Ukraine could ignite them, it could not launch them or set their paths, etc.
2) They did not have the budget to guard them, let alone maintain them, even less reverse engineer. The biggest risk was that rough states with deep pockets would buy those rockets on the black market (and Ukraine notably sold out most of their soviet arsenal).
3) Thus, the only real asset was the nuclear material itself. An asset that was more likely going to end up on the black market than do anything useful for Ukraine's defense.
varjag 12 hours ago [-]
There's so much wrong you crammed into just three points am at loss to even where should I start.
The value of nuclear weapons is in the warheads not delivery vehicles. Even then Ukraine absolutely could maintain a trimmed down nuclear arsenal with the missiles/engines serviced by Yuzhmash. After all bare ass Russia did it in the 1990s somehow. All the American financing of nuclear security to Russia would have been proportionally redirected to Ukraine.
Then, Ukraine possessed a stockpile of highly enriched uranium all way until 2011. It was indeed sold off under Yanukovich to a rogue state though: Russia.
There is one huge drawback to not signing the memorandum: Lukashenka's Belarus (another signatory) would have also kept the nukes. This is however never brought up by the memorandum fans and non-proliferation enjoyers on the Internet precisely because it's not something they would have minded.
epolanski 9 hours ago [-]
> There's so much wrong you crammed into just three points am at loss to even where should I start.
There's nothing wrong, what I wrote literally comes from official declassified documents and reports, you can read what insiders had to say.
Ukrainians didn't want them, feared their meltdown and their inability to even just maintain them. The rest of the world knew they were bound to end up in a rogue's actor hands very soon.
Ukraine was presented a carrot large enough to go along with it. This has nothing to do with its technical ability, as it remained a spacefaring nation throughout the recession years.
Either way you seem to contradict yourself. On one hand Ukraine, then a major owner of former Soviet military industrial complex could not maintain or use the weapons. On the other you insist unspecified rogue actors would be skilled enough to maintain and use them. Make up your mind.
So the rest of the world did not know anything, as the perfect safety record of enriched nuclear fuel in Ukraine illustrates. They did want for the nukes to end up in Russia for the proliferation fears and convenience of negotiating with one power. The decision turned out ultimately misguided, contributing to the unraveling of the postwar world order we see today (ironically including the proliferation of nuclear technology to the rogue states). Bill Clinton, about as insider as it gets have expressed his regrets about it last year.
kevin_thibedeau 11 hours ago [-]
> You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs.
No you don't. Cold war ICBMs all used intertial guidance. The most advanced in the form of the MX had a max CEP of 90 m.
krzyk 12 hours ago [-]
Don't forget, but keeping nukes in Ukraine, would mean that Russia would get less of them.
cmcaleer 11 hours ago [-]
It wasn't really particularly material whether Russia had 30,000 nukes or 32,000 nukes in 1994. It was material if other states got the components that were in those 2,000 nukes.
Braxton1980 12 hours ago [-]
Could they have jerryrigged them?
For example load one into a truck (similar to the recent drone incident), drive it to the Kremlim, and then force a detonation?
varispeed 12 hours ago [-]
Really?
1) Nukes were built mostly by Ukrainian engineers. They would do just fine. They could also build and launch satellites if needed.
2) So Ukraine couldn't launch them because they needed electronics and satellites, but some rogue state with deep pocket could? Okay.
3) Of course!
Comrade, that is Russian propaganda you are disseminating here.
cromka 14 hours ago [-]
Then why would they need a full Budapest memorandum with co-signees if Moscow could just take them back?
This sounds ridiculous.
varjag 13 hours ago [-]
It was indeed because there was no legal foundation for Russian ownership of all Soviet nuclear assets, no matter how every other nuclear power wanted it at the time.
epolanski 13 hours ago [-]
By the way a "memorandum" is a document that forms no legal foundation at all.
dlahoda 14 hours ago [-]
because rockets to be transported to russkies back. if they would not sign, some bad things could happened along the way.
TiredOfLife 14 hours ago [-]
And Ukraine built them.
renerick 14 hours ago [-]
That's not true. All nuclear weapons in USSR were built inside modern Russian territory, there was no production in any other republic.
He probably meant Ukrainian engineers. One of the reasons Moscow is so laser focused and grabbing Ukraine as it used to be Soviet's Union brain.
franktankbank 11 hours ago [-]
Is this real? Why would Ukraine be such a concentration of brain power compared to other regions? I'm not super skeptical given the few Ukrainians I've met but still humans are generally equal...
justsomehnguy 7 hours ago [-]
> Is this real?
You can see the link in GP comment by yourself.
nine_k 14 hours ago [-]
The rockets, not the nukes (warheads).
libertine 10 hours ago [-]
That's a recurring Russian propaganda point, which is easily verifiable as a lie.
Even basic logic - Ukraine had the technical know-how to do whatever they wanted with the nukes. Moscow didn't have control, at best on paper - if they had control, there was no need for the Budapest Memorandum.
I keep debunking this propaganda point over and over again lol
justsomehnguy 13 hours ago [-]
Not theirs and you conveniently omit everything what happened in between, including the giant amounts of money directly and indirectly poured into it.
o_m 13 hours ago [-]
What do you mean it was not theirs? The Soviet Union was dissolved and split into multiple states. Russia is not the Soviet Union, just another part of the former Soviet Union like Ukraine.
severino 12 hours ago [-]
Russia is not the Soviet Union, except when we need to talk things like the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia or all the other horror stories about the USSR. Then it was indeed Russia, and Ukraine was just a kidnapped state.
Now every country that has the capacity to get a strategic deterrent will race to get one. So much for Biden's escalation management. Too bad Trump likes Russia so much he does everything not to step on their toes. With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now.
b33j0r 13 hours ago [-]
My counter-argument to norms being the main deterrent is simple. It’s never going to get easier to hide an Oak Ridge in your rogue state. The industrial scale of uranium enrichment has a fundamental limit, no matter how you do it.
You have to process massive piles of mass into a very small fraction. And you have to collect all those rocks. And that’s just for fission.
As long as any country with preemptive strike capability exists, and satellites exist… I just don’t see how anyone could do it.
franktankbank 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
averageRoyalty 14 hours ago [-]
Genuine question, if the US has that capability and Trump is the issue, why didn't Biden do what was needed to make the war over?
walterlw 14 hours ago [-]
Biden took the approach of keeping 10 pairs of gloves on when dealing with Russia. Don't help too little not to make it too easy for the russians, don't help to much to avoid escalation.
averageRoyalty 10 hours ago [-]
I understand and agree with that. But you said "With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now.".
If that was viable, why would Biden not have done so during the years he had?
lazide 14 hours ago [-]
The US has every incentive to turn Ukraine into Russia’s Vietnam.
12 hours ago [-]
FpUser 13 hours ago [-]
>"With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now."
And you know this how? Accordingly to all those initial predictions Russia should be already disintegrated and fallen under heavy sanctions, Putin's regime replaced etc. etc. I suspect all these analytics and think tanks should be cleaning toilets instead.
Also there is a line in that backing crossing which may lead to an all out nuclear war. Rational countries that matter understandably do not want to test it unless their existence is really threatened.
tome 5 hours ago [-]
> Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked
That's ahistorical in the case of Syria and Iraq. Israel destroyed the nascent nuclear weapons programmes of Syria and Iraq, just as it has done to Iran's. Syria and Iraq did not give up those programmes willingly.
lonelyasacloud 13 hours ago [-]
> You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
> That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
So, I have an honest (non rhetorical) question: Was NK saved more by having their own nukes, or by sharing a land border with China who has nukes and doesn't want the US getting involved in the area?
dummydummy1234 6 hours ago [-]
North Korea deterrent has always been the amount of artillery 50 km from soul.
Nuclear weapons can target, the US based on the region, sure. But NK does not need nukes to reduce the south Korean capital to rubble.
amelius 11 hours ago [-]
I have a question: why did China allow NK to develop nukes?
gcanyon 10 hours ago [-]
South Africa gave up actual nuclear weapons and didn't get attacked. I think tying the "got attacked" back to "gave up their nuclear program" bit requires justification.
ashoeafoot 11 hours ago [-]
All those countries would have plunged into internal turmoil after arab spring - us involvement or not - so Isis, hezbullah or al quaida with nukes would be the news now.
JKCalhoun 11 hours ago [-]
> Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
By your logic, I am a little surprised Iran is still even a state then.
gcanyon 10 hours ago [-]
> Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
How has the situation been better in the twenty years NK has had nuclear weapons than the fifty years after the Korean war and before NK got nukes?
compsciphd 12 hours ago [-]
why do you view nukes as the ultimate deterrent? Israel has nukes and it gets attacked. This proves the above is a logical fallacy.
contrarian1234 13 hours ago [-]
But why a nuclear bomb?
I never understood the logic.. (or maybe it's the theatric element?) There are other WMD that seem much simpler. If they hypothetically release some horrible biological agent in Israel - it could incapacitate the country overnight
Or set off a dirty bomb to make huge regions unlivable (just the perception of radiation risk would preclude many from living there.. see Fukushima)
11 hours ago [-]
quonn 10 hours ago [-]
> You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that
No you don't, unless you're a dictatorship (including all the examples you gave).
mdorazio 10 hours ago [-]
Ukraine would like to have a word with you.
scotty79 11 hours ago [-]
> On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects.
That sounds insane. I don't think world would be more peaceful if every country under every government had WMDs. We'd be in the middle of nuclear winter now if that was the case. You could draw analogies to everyone owning a gun. We know it just ends up with many more dead and nothing being more peaceful.
> Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
He's wrong. What protects North Korea is that it's poor, has no natural resources and devastated human capital and neither attacks anyone with terrorist attacks nor credibly prophesies their intent to kill any nation or ethnicity.
If they did that, they'd be steamrolled already. WMDs or not.
moltude 12 hours ago [-]
Add Ukraine to that list.
BrandoElFollito 11 hours ago [-]
Ukraine is another example from a different area
dreghgh 15 hours ago [-]
> This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you?
Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice.
Gud 15 hours ago [-]
But clearly all these smart people are not involved in the decision making, considering how Iran’s foreign policy has looked like, exactly how parent described.
diggan 11 hours ago [-]
> clearly all these smart people are not involved in the decision making
Why not? Smart people can make decisions that look weird from the outside.
The foreign policy of the US been looking weird for decades to most outside parties, yet I'm sure there are smart people involved in it on a daily basis. But even with smart people involved, the US been invading countries based on false premises more than once, not sure why it would need to be different for Iran or any other country.
dreghgh 14 hours ago [-]
Compare military spending by Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and the United States (only Middle East related) with Iranian military spending, over the four decades of Iran's shadow wars with these countries and isolation by much of the rest of the world.
And yet Iranian proxies have repeatedly challenged these powers across the Middle East, in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Sinai, etc. And a lot of Iran's actions have broad support in many other Middle Eastern countries, including strong US allies, those where there are no natural ethnic, religious or linguistic ties to Iran, and where there is prosperity based on peace and the American world order.
Whatever else the Iranian govt are, they are not foreign policy under-hitters or flawed tacticians blinded by dogmatism.
reissbaker 13 hours ago [-]
On the contrary: at this point all of that spending appears to have been a waste. Hezbollah neutralized, Syria regime-changed, Gaza in tatters, and now they've lost their nuclear program.
Imagine if they'd spent the money on education, or developing their economy. They could easily have reconciled with the U.S. if they stopped chanting "Death to America" and done something productive with their time and money. This was the inevitable result of their plans, and easily predictable.
dreghgh 12 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure you know much about Iran.
They did spend a lot of the oil revenue on both education and developing their economy.
Compare them perhaps to Saudi Arabia, a similar sized country with much more oil and much fewer people. Saudi does not have any industry, does not export anything except hydrocarbons. All the extraction is done by foreign engineers.
Iran educates engineers, including many foreign students, has industry outside of oil, and largely works its own drilling and refinery. The Iranian economy is not dependent on migrant labor.
Saudi pays billions to Europe and America for high tech weaponry, yet can't defeat the Houthis. A considerable proportion of the money goes to baksheesh both for the Saudis themselves and their western suppliers. If Saudi decided tomorrow to challenge its Western backers in any real way, the umbrella would be withdrawn and the guys in the solid gold cars would last about a week.
Iran has wreaked havoc throughout the region for 40 years by putting $30 rifles, $200 RPGs, $100 IEDs and now, $2000 drones in the right (wrong) hands at the right time. They haven't lost a regular soldier in battle since the 1980s.
Even if you're calling the end of Iranian influence in the region right now, it's still an incredible run of hitting above one's weight. The only country in the Middle East this can be compared with is Israel, who are themselves legendary for hyper-insightful tactical leverage.
reissbaker 2 hours ago [-]
Iran spends a massive portion of its budget on military, which has ultimately amounted to nothing. The official budget is 10-15% of government spending, but the IRGC is mostly off-books, and likely to be at least 4x higher than the official budget states when counting just funds embezzled from public works projects [1] — since the official budget has about a third of all military spending going to the IRGC, this implies Iran's actual military expenditures are more like 30% or more of total government spending.
You can try a lot of mental contortions to justify it, but I think the simplest explanation is the cleanest: this forever war against Israel and America — the "little Satan" and the "great Satan" as they referred to them — was a catastrophic miscalculation. They should have spent the time and money elsewhere, and reconciled with America at least, and life would be better for Iranians if they had.
I’ve seen this Iranian engineer myth perpetuated ad nauseum on every social network for the last 24 hours and never before that, as if a desperate attempt to repaint the country as anything but a failed state. The reality is that Iran has been propped up by China and Russia for decades and has wasted all of its incoming capital on weapons and kickbacks rather than doing anything to boost its domestic situation.
kevinventullo 7 hours ago [-]
Having lived in the U.S. my entire life, I’ve worked closely with many Iranian-born and -educated mathematicians, computer scientists, and software engineers. To OP’s point, I’ve never encountered anyone from Saudi Arabia in those fields.
dreghgh 11 hours ago [-]
Just because you didn't know something until 24 hours ago does not make it a myth.
1. Haha, just because someone is smart/knows one thing, doesn't mean they are smart/knows everything about all things. Especially when talking about people educated in STEM, not Humanities or Philosophy
2. There are plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are religious fanatics or just power hungry or want to advance in the IRGC ranks/carrier ladder. Khamene.ai is a Living God and there are many engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who worship this deity
3. There are also lots of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are threatened and forced to work for the IRGC. Just like it was in the Soviet Union under the Communism
rxtexit 10 hours ago [-]
Of course you get down voted.So many delusional people on this forum that believe themselves to be experts in all domains because they get well paid to write javascript.
We will just forget that von Neumann advocated for nuclear first strike based on game theory.
vixen99 12 hours ago [-]
As you say 'probably. How do you know no simulations have been explored? Or is this an assumption that events somehow prove that suggestion? Some might take issue with that.
JumpCrisscross 15 hours ago [-]
> Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice
America also has lots of brilliant people. Then we have Hegseth, Noem and the other fuck.
jandrewrogers 17 hours ago [-]
North Korea is a Chinese client state. As a general rule, client states are treated as extensions of the countries that control them. Iran is not a client state.
choonway 15 hours ago [-]
NK is more of a russian client state, not chinese.
yard2010 16 hours ago [-]
Iran is more like a server state, it serves terror and death through their proxies. It's like a vpn of destruction.
dudefeliciano 15 hours ago [-]
then what is the US pray tell? The cloudflare of killing?
20after4 15 hours ago [-]
That's a fairly apt comparison actually.
tough 14 hours ago [-]
meh, more like the AWS
alkyon 17 hours ago [-]
If anything, the lack of competence is on the other side.
Was enriched uranium destroyed? I doubt it.
Have they even "obliterated" Fordow site buried 90 m deep inside the mountain? I have serious doubts.
Iran's nuclear program was set back some months if anything.
birn559 17 hours ago [-]
Care to elaborate? A random person doubting things doesn't help other people or bringing a discussion forward.
fifilura 16 hours ago [-]
I agree with the gp.
Iran is a huge country and USA and Israel has been pointing their finger on this exakt spot for weeks.
Either they dug further down or they just transported things away.
Leaving it all there just seems like a really weird thing to do.
whilenot-dev 15 hours ago [-]
> transported things away
This implies a tunnel system, or was this transport done in plain sight?
perihelions 13 hours ago [-]
There's indeed a lot of transport happening in plain sight,
> "Prior to tonight’s airstrikes on the three Iranian nuclear-associated facilities, Maxar collected high-resolution satellite imagery on June 19th and June 20th of the Fordow fuel enrichment facility that revealed unusual truck and vehicular activity near the entrance to the underground military complex. On June 19th, a group of 16 cargo trucks were positioned along the access road that leads to the tunnel entrance of the facility. Subsequent imagery on June 20th revealed that most of the trucks had repositioned approximately one kilometer northwest along the access road; however, additional trucks and several bulldozers were seen near the entrance to the main facility and one truck was positioned immediately next to the main tunnel entrance."
yehoshuapw 14 hours ago [-]
there actually are images of lots of movement there - so perhaps plain sight is the right answer.
hopefully I am wrong
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
> Care to elaborate? A random person doubting things doesn't help other people or bringing a discussion forward.
I don't know if you noticed, but what you are arguing for is in fact for mindlessly accepting unverified claims and extrapolate them to an optimal outcome. This is the opposite of critical thinking, and goes well beyond wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, if you pay attention to OP's point, you'll understand that Iran's nuclear sites have been continuously designed and developed for decades, while subjected to an almost evolutionary pressure, to continue operations even after withstanding direct attacks in scenarios matching exactly Trump's attacks.
In the very least, you must assess the effect of those strikes before making any sort of claim.
Another factor which it seems you somehow missed was the fact that Russia, another nuclear-capable totalitarian regime, is nowadays heavily dependent on Iran to conduct it's imperialist agenda. If Russia was negotiating handing over nuclear capabilities to North Korea in exchange for supporting it's war effort, do you believe Russia now has no interest to speed up Iran's nuclear weapons programmes?
01100011 16 hours ago [-]
Weird that Iran, an oil exporter with huge potential for solar, would expend so much energy on protecting a purportedly civilian nuclear program. I'm sure it's nothing.
This isn't really relevant but I'm only making one comment in this post so I'll say it here: young folks don't remember decades of Iranian state sponsored terrorism and do not understand the context of conflict in the middle east.
oa335 13 hours ago [-]
> context of conflict in the middle east.
Conflict in the Middle East is entirely rooted in Israeli ethnic cleansing campaigns and western adventurism and protections of Israeli interests. If Iran went away tomorrow, the region would still have massive support for violent movements targeting Israel.
01100011 3 hours ago [-]
People are angry because their totalitarian governments invest in bombs and supporting terror and can't build functioning economies. Weird that you wouldn't factor that in. Sure, it's entirely Israel's fault... Oy vey.
youngtaff 13 hours ago [-]
Sooner or later they’re going to run oil of oil and gas
m000 12 hours ago [-]
To be frank, it wouldn't be a surprise for Trump to claim "total obliteration" while having achieved nothing substantial.
This would also be a very convenient way to break the current impasse: Trump can claim victory and brag about US weapons, Iranians can continue their program virtually unscathed, perhaps after bombing some minor evacuated US base for show.
After the dust settles, Iran can withdraw fron NNPT and the next day have Pakistan ship them a bomb. Peace (via MAD) achieved! Maybe we should even give Donald his Nobel prize for that.
herbst 16 hours ago [-]
> No increase in radiation levels have been detected, the UN's nuclear watchdog says
I guess means no. However I have no idea what they would say if they did. "Yes we poisoned the whole area for generations to come, success!"
KevinCarbonara 16 hours ago [-]
I don't know that it can be confirmed, but Iran is claiming that the US tipped them off. This is a fairly standard tactic, and it makes more sense here. This is something that would satisfy both the pro-war crowd and the group that is pro-Israel or anti-Iran, but not necessarily pro-war. We get to show our strength and support for our allies without really committing.
hackerknew 16 hours ago [-]
Even if it is only set back by a few months, that is enough time to put pressure on Iran to abandon it altogether.
Keep in mind, Israel has full aerial control over Iran and has taken out hundreds of their missile launchers.
We can keep pounding the various nuclear facilities and hinder ant chances of rebuilding, making any effort futile.
disgruntledphd2 16 hours ago [-]
This would be a really risky strategy as it will push the Iranians into a corner with potentially large impacts on the oil price (which will change US public opinion).
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
That sounds to me like the US seriously needs to promote non-petroleum sources of energy. If not for the environment, for their own national sovereignity.
dreghgh 15 hours ago [-]
The thing is, the United States is self sufficient in petroleum. But domestic prices will go up to reflect the effect on world supply.
Arguably the same could happen given widespread use of non petroleum sources of energy. Prices will go up to reflect the marginal cost of hydrocarbon based energy, even if that use is minimal, until the point where the energy network is completely decoupled from those markets.
This happened in the United Kingdom after the invasion of Ukraine. More wind was used as gas became more expensive. But the price of electricity from wind also went up.
chgs 14 hours ago [-]
US could ban fuel exports. Unlikely as rich people would suffer, but they may be placated with bribes.
disgruntledphd2 12 hours ago [-]
The UK increase was because of how the contracts work but yeah agreed in general. Sustainable energy is good for a bunch of non environmental reasons.
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
The US is a net oil exporter.
spacecadet 14 hours ago [-]
Great for the wealthy!
spacecadet 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but good luck! Been trying to convince people of this for years...
Ygg2 10 hours ago [-]
As Sun Tzu famously said: "You really should back your enemy in a corner and ask them for negotiations. Having someone's feet on hot coals really speeds it up. And if they break it, it's a case for using nukes against them. "
Such advanced people, the Chinese are.
UncleMeat 9 hours ago [-]
"Don't worry, we can just engage in a bombing campaign against a foreign nation indefinitely."
nmca 17 hours ago [-]
How do you purport to know this?
hajile 10 hours ago [-]
Fordow is widely reported to be significantly deeper than GBU-57 can penetrate (which is just 60 meters). The only way they penetrate is landing two of them in the exact same hole (think Robin Hood splitting an arrow with another arrow). Off by just a little and it winds up with it's own separate 60m hole.
CEP with GPS for our most accurate glide bombs is 5 meters. But GPS jamming is cheap and easy and the best precision we get in that case is 30 meters CEP.
GPU-57 gets its power from gravity. Reaching that 60 meter maximum penetration requires dropping the bomb from maximum elevation, but without GPS, that further increases the CEP.
With just 6 bombs, it seems unlikely that they could reliably penetrate. Actual penetration would likely require nuclear penetrators, but those also break the nuclear prohibition and open Pandora's box in places like Ukraine.
A great example of the problem is Yemen. We tried to get the Houthi to stop by dropping bunker busters on their tunnel systems and completely failed. We were forced to reach a ceasefire agreement (one that likely went up in smoke last night).
coffeebeqn 17 hours ago [-]
The layout of Fordow from what we’ve seen is not a single site. Depending on how many runs they did maybe it is all but destroyed or maybe it’s 1/3 destroyed. I’m sure Israel’s intelligence on it is pretty accurate (probably not public at this point)
stickfigure 17 hours ago [-]
I'm willing to bet that the Americans can build another one of those GBU-57 bombs every some months if they had to.
adventured 17 hours ago [-]
The US, Israel and possibly Britain will install a no-fly zone over Iran. Israel is going to be entirely unwilling to allow Iran to go right back to building again what just got destroyed. This was a once in decades shot for Israel to take against Iran, in its very weakened state (with its proxies out of commission, Syria knocked over, and Russia very preoccupied). They'll attempt the post Gulf War I approach against Iraq (as an invasion will never be on the table). Sanctions and no-fly zone. They'll retain control over Iran's sky and in doing so will be free to bomb as they see fit if Iran attempts to build or re-start something like Fordow. If they attempt to install new air defenses, they'll simply bomb them. Whether that one bombing took care of Fordow is going to be moot, they'll hit it ten more times if that's what it takes, and destroy anything that attempts to move in or out of there. Israel can't maintain a no-fly zone over Iran so the US will be enlisted to do the heavy lifting on that.
400thecat 16 hours ago [-]
aiding regime change would be much easier, and would solve all these problems better. At some point in the next few days, the regime will be so weakened that the Iranian people will overthrow it themselves
dreghgh 15 hours ago [-]
Yes, this was also said about Iraq in 1991.
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
The US negotiators in Iraq in ‘91 stupidly didn’t enforce a total no-fly zone, allowing the use of helicopters by the regime. Saddam used helicopter gunships to mow down the would-be revolutionaries attempting regime change. Israel won’t make the same mistake.
dreghgh 14 hours ago [-]
91 also happened in a brief period where Russia was holding back from supplying end-of-line military hardware to anyone who wanted to take a shot at the United States and its clients.
Gonkdd 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
UncleMeat 9 hours ago [-]
In one month if the Iranian government has not been overthrown by its own people what will you do? Will you change your beliefs or will the goalpost move?
adventured 16 hours ago [-]
The IRGC is unlikely to let the regime fall so easily. They'll kill a lot of Iranians to stop that from happening. The Iranian people have limited means to fight at present. The no-fly zone and sanctions approach will be used to attempt to strangle the regime over the coming years. It'll take a small miracle for the regime to fall anytime soon, it's not that weak yet (imo) despite what the propaganda is claiming.
400thecat 13 hours ago [-]
Israel can bomb the IRGC and Basij bases, police and prisons (release political prisoners). They can collapse the regime, restrict its movement, eliminate chain of command. From there the Iranian people can raise and topple the regime
tguvot 8 minutes ago [-]
israel already bombed those things, with exception of prisons
TheAlchemist 11 hours ago [-]
This is quite interesting to me - how long can Isreal really continue with such intensity ?
The distance between Israel and Iran is huge - it must be extremely expensive to operate the air bridge allowing their air force to operate as it did last week.
But I would be really surprised if they can go on like that for a month.
disgruntledphd2 12 hours ago [-]
This seems wildly implausible. I've never heard of this happening as the result of foreign attacks. And also, any new regime is very unlikely to be more pro Israel or the US.
tharmas 16 hours ago [-]
Overthrow and get what? Another Libya?
foldr 11 hours ago [-]
I’d be somewhat skeptical of how much can be achieved just by bombing. It didn’t do much to stop the Nazi war machine in WWII. We have better munitions now, but we also have a lot fewer of them, and the US public won’t tolerate 121,000 dead airmen, either.
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
I agree. Bombing can only "do" so much....
heresie-dabord 10 hours ago [-]
With all due respect, please reconsider these points:
> This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent
Well now we should all be terrified.
> Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first
You should reflect on the religious elements prominently at play within these belligerent states.
I deplore kakistocracy of any stripe, but it is obvious that dictatorships and dictatorship-curious regimes of any sort are an existential threat.
dlahoda 14 hours ago [-]
it took nk 40+ years to get nukes.
is this definion of inching?
also you say nk uses nukes as deterrent, deterrent from whom?
if they deterred any, they were fine deterring it for 40+ years without.
FilosofumRex 16 hours ago [-]
Israel defines itself as a "jewish" state, and at least 50% of members of current governing parties in parliament are from religious parties and zionist parties.
In what sense Israel is not a theocracy.
9dev 16 hours ago [-]
Maybe the fact that every single one of these representatives has been appointed in a fair democratic vote?
tsimionescu 16 hours ago [-]
Iran became a theocracy through a popular uprising, too. Democracy and theocracy are quite compatible, as long as the people are religious enough.
9dev 16 hours ago [-]
That would mean the USA are a theocracy too, given most senators are Christian. That doesn’t make too much sense.
Theocracy is a form of government in which religious leaders rule in the name of a deity, and religious law is the basis for all legal and political decisions.
tsimionescu 15 hours ago [-]
The USA is not a theocracy, though. The majority-Christian senators are not generally enacting theocratic laws and regulations (though there are some tendencies and influences, as seen with the recent repeal of Roe v Wade, for example).
However, Israel does have highly theocratic tendencies. Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute. They have even more religious influence on public life than the USA does (which is already somewhat high by European standards), with businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays (not selling risen bread during Passover, making elevators stop automatically on every floor during days of rest, observing kosher restrictions on food etc). Many of their foreign policy decisions are explicitly influenced by religious tenets, such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god (which includes modern day Israel, the Occupied Territories, and several parts of modern day Syria, Lebanon, and others).
They're nowhere near the level of religous rule and/or fanaticism as Saudi Arabia, but they have much more religious influence and control of public life then a modern European/US-style democracy.
9dev 12 hours ago [-]
> The USA is not a theocracy, though.
Hence I brought it up, yes.
> Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute.
Many reputable democracies[1], including Germany, Australia, Norway or Switzerland, have a reference to god in their constitution; that doesn't make them theocracies. Even in the USA, presidents swear their oath on the bible!
> businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays
Try purchasing something on a Christian holiday in Germany. Did you know it's prohibited by law to play Life of Brian in public on Easter Sunday there?
> such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god
That in turn isn't government directive, but a political opinion amongst several. Now I'm very much in opposition to a lot of what the Israeli government does, but they're really not what the term Theocracy means. That claim is just ridiculous.
> Many reputable democracies[1], including Germany, Australia, Norway or Switzerland, have a reference to god in their constitution
None of these say that their states are Christian and Democratic, nor do they have government decisions finding that this means anything at all. In Israel, by contrast, their highest court has found that, for example, a right to return for Palestinians would be unconstitutional - as it would undermine the Jewish character of the state of Israel. A reference to some god in their constitution would be a completely different thing.
> That in turn isn't government directive, but a political opinion amongst several.
This is an extreme downplaying of what I said. Several of the people in charge of the Israeli government have explicitly and exclusively, religious motivations in their decision making - that is a very clear sign of a form of theocracy.
15 hours ago [-]
otikik 15 hours ago [-]
You… don’t see it?
15 hours ago [-]
rf15 16 hours ago [-]
m8 they literally swear on the bible
/s
baxtr 15 hours ago [-]
This is not how it played out if you talk to Iranians.
They will tell you that the theocracy folks were a small minority of the entire resistance and first built a government of unity.
Once in charge they started annihilating all other opposition factions one by one.
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
> Iran became a theocracy through a popular uprising, too.
OP referred to democratic votes, whereas you talk about "popular uprising". Can you explain in your own words why you believe these are even comparable?
brabel 15 hours ago [-]
Most people in the West seem to believe the removal of democratically elected, pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine after a popular uprising in 2014 was somehow democratic. That should show that depending on who is being ousted and your opinion on them, yes the two things can be comparable.
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
> Most people in the West seem to believe the removal of democratically elected, pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine (...)
You should seriously learn about Yanukovych before making any sort of claim regarding him. He was elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU and pro-western programme, only to turn out to be a Russian puppet that not only enforced policies completely contrary to his programme but also pushed Ukraine into a dictatorship.
The "popular uprising" you glance over was actually months of demonstrations protesting Yanukovych unilateral rejection of the EU–Ukraine association agreement as ordered by Russia, which he campaigned and was elected for and contrary to Ukraine's parliament overwhelming approval.
You're talking about the same Yanukovych who felt compelled to exile in Russia.
> That should show that depending on who is being ousted (...)
Those who favour freedom under democracies are indeed partial against dictators who try to destroy democratic states and deny people's rights, specially if it to serve the interests of other totalitarian regimes.
lenkite 14 hours ago [-]
And all your arguments don't matter. He was a legally elected President - whose election was even EU Vetted by many, many observers and found to be completely valid. He could have been overthrown in the next elections and if that had happened, the Russian ethnic regions wouldn't have rebelled. You would have yet another corrupt Ukrainian President and no-one would have batted an eye. Life would have just continued as usual.
But the US was far too eager to carry out regime change and so we have the dreadful situation today.
9dev 14 hours ago [-]
That is an awful retelling of history. There was no revolution in Ukraine, but protests and demonstrations that were brutally crushed by government forces. The people persevered though and the president fled the country, leading to a formal and correct process of electing a new government after. The US didn’t have anything more to do with this.
lenkite 13 hours ago [-]
> The US didn’t have anything more to do with this.
Only if one is utterly blind and put fingers in their ears, can one truly believe that. Nuland's call was leaked where she was proudly deciding who would form the next government in Ukraine and who should be kept on the outside. And her personal choice of puppet: "Yats" did in-fact become the prime minister. Nuland was even handing out cookies to anti-Yanukovych protests for Christ's sake. Mc Cain actually flew in and congratulated the protesters.
Imagine if that was happening in the US against a US President - members of foreign nation's government cheering on a coup and deciding who would be the next President. There would be Absolute War.
9dev 12 hours ago [-]
For those reading this and doubting: Read the call transcript for yourself, annotated by Jonathan Marcus of the BBC:
Yes, the USA is attempting to facilitate talks here. No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda.
lenkite 12 hours ago [-]
I also fully support not just reading the call transcript, but also listening to the leaked call so you get Nuland's firm tone. I would reserve very skeptical judgement on the "annotations". Those weren't part of the call.
> No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda
Anyone with a rational brain who separates themselves from biases and emotions and carefully listens to the call would realize there is no propaganda involved here. Also, for better clarity of judgement, please perform a thought exercise and consider what would happen if a foreign government's members were discussing the personal choices , makeup and "talks" for members of the next American government.
mopsi 11 hours ago [-]
> please perform a thought exercise and consider what would happen if a foreign government's members were discussing the personal choices , makeup and "talks" for members of the next American government.
We can discuss potential successors to Xi right here on HN, and an outsider might say that "a forum frequented by Silicon Valley billionaires is picking the next leader of China". But that would be a huge misrepresentation of us and our influence.
The fixation of Russian trolls on that single phone call reeks of desperation. During election season, I'd expect hundreds of such calls to be happening at any given moment between various officials, strategists, financiers, candidates, analysts, and many other people.
stavros 14 hours ago [-]
But the GP is not saying the election wasn't valid, they're saying the guy was misrepresenting himself. I hate the US meddling as much as the next guy, but why is the solution to that problem "just endure four years of destruction until he leaves"?
lenkite 13 hours ago [-]
All politicians "mispresent themselves". Kicking them out during elections is the way they are thrown out in a functioning democracy. Or do you believe Americans should storm the White House and beat up the President anytime a campaign promise is broken ? And one that is magnified by the funding and urging of a foreign government ? Such actions - which break the "deal of democracy" naturally lead to civil war - which is exactly what happened in Ukraine.
stavros 13 hours ago [-]
I don't care what Americans do, but I'd quite like to storm our parliament and kick out the current government.
motorest 5 hours ago [-]
> All politicians "mispresent themselves".
No. The ones that try to push agendas that go against their programme and are deeply unpopular will often see public protests and even general strikes demanding policy reversals or governments stepping down. Do you call those regime changes as well?
tsimionescu 9 hours ago [-]
I'm not 100% sure of Ukraine, but most democracies have a legal way to impeach a sitting president. If Yanukovich was committing literal treason, acting on behalf of a foreign country, there should have been a slam dunk case for impeachment.
stavros 9 hours ago [-]
Our government killed 50 people in a train accident because they couldn't be bothered to maintain the safety systems, then immediately ordered crews to the site to cover everything up with dirt so there would be no trace of fuel additives being illegally transported on a passenger train. The courts found no wrongdoing, and they're still in power.
Who's going to impeach them?
spacecadet 13 hours ago [-]
I agree with you.
m000 13 hours ago [-]
> they're saying the guy was misrepresenting himself
You mean like "peacemaker"/"America First" Donald Trump?
> why is the solution to that problem "just endure four years of destruction until he leaves"?
If Americans can wait out for the second Trump term to be over, Ukrainians could do it too for Yanukovych.
stavros 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah I disagree that Americans should wait it out.
m000 12 hours ago [-]
Fair enough :)
motorest 11 hours ago [-]
> And all your arguments don't matter. He was a legally elected President - whose election was even EU Vetted by many, many observers and found to be completely valid.
Yes, he was. What you are leaving out is the fact that in spite of being elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU platform, it turned out he was a Russian agent and betrayed his mandate to enforce Kremlin's anti-west agenda and force himself upon Ukraine as another kremlin-controlled dictatorship.
Except the people of Ukraine wanted none of that and protested against this betrayal, which culminated in the wannabe dictator seeking exile in Russia.
Somehow you leave this out when you talk about basic democratic principles. Why is that? Is it out of sheer ignorance?
What's also very odd is the way that you somehow try to portray anti-government protests as revolutions and regime changes, when this is a Hallmark of any democratic system: when a government doesn't follow through with their compromise and go directly against their mandate and people's will, they express their discontent and demand elections. How odd that when democracies reject Russia's interference, this is deemed as an anti-democratic coup.
Narretz 13 hours ago [-]
There's no way of knowing that Russia wouldn't have incited the "rebellions" anyway. Once the writing was on the wall that the majority of Ukrainians didn't want to be Russia's puppets, Putin would likely have acted one way or the other. Why take chances?
inglor_cz 13 hours ago [-]
"He could have been overthrown in the next elections"
Let me see if Erdogan can be overthrown in the next elections in Turkey. No US involvement either.
If you live in a stable Western country, your trust in the next elections being fair and free is understandable, but in that case, refrain from any authoritative talk ("your arguments don't matter") about other places. In recent democracies that transitioned from totalitarian rule just a decade or two ago, elections are far easier to hijack than in the UK or Denmark.
"no-one would have batted an eye"
You cannot really make such a strong prediction about places like Ukraine, the Balkans, the Middle East etc. These are places where empires collide, and several crises in a century are almost a given.
Anyway I am fairly glad that Ukraine didn't end up like Belarus did, a satellite state of Moscow. Anything is better than becoming a satellite state of Moscow. Most of us from behind the Iron Curtain would rather fight a war than submit to Moscow again.
Interestingly, the Western leftists, who otherwise preach anti-colonialism from breakfast to sunset and then some, don't understand the same dynamic among white-majority nations. But it is still there.
lenkite 13 hours ago [-]
Did you somehow magically miss the part where Yanukovych's election was extensively observed and vetted by the EU and several other international bodies ? The EU’s own delegation — alongside the OSCE and other bodies — stated that the election was "free, fair, and transparent".
"Over 700 observers from EU member states participated, in addition to OSCE/ODIHR, the EU Parliament, PACE, and other international delegations"
The Guardian reported EU-led observers praised the vote as "fair and truly competitive" noting only "minor irregularities” that did not affect overall results".
"After the second round of the election international observers and the OSCE called the election transparent and honest."
I was talking about the next election. You expressed your conviction that Yanukovich could be removed in the next election, remember?
I expressed my doubt about iron-cladness of such future election. Strongmen-like leaders in fresh democracies have a lot of methods how to win next elections without actually winning them.
lenkite 12 hours ago [-]
Ok, but I am really incredulous now - If he won the next election even after extensive vetting by EU and a plethora of international observers who called the elections "fair and transparent", then he has completely won the seat of the Presidency. On what basis does your personal opinion overrule the result of democracy ?
mopsi 11 hours ago [-]
The fact that someone won elections doesn't mean they get to stay until the end of their term no matter what they do.
Yanukovych had over 100 people killed in a violent crackdown on protests, then fled to Russia as he was about to be imprisoned. On 21 February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted 328-0 to hold snap elections to replace Yanukovych before the end of his term. Not a single member of his own party supported him or voted against the decision. He was replaced through general elections held a few months later. This is exactly how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work.
Sure, by that time the coup was successful. Anyone in Kyiv who objected to it would face arrest and incarceration themselves.
The vote did not follow formal impeachment procedure under Article 111 of the Ukrainian Constitution (which requires a Constitutional Court review and more formal steps).
I am sure you then have no objections to the 53–0 vote in Crimea to remove the then-Ukrainian-appointed prime minister Anatoly Mogilev and install Sergei Aksyonov and the subsequent referendum on autonomy. After all, this is "exactly how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work".
mopsi 9 hours ago [-]
The vote by the parliament did follow formal procedures: not those of an impeachment, because the president was not impeached, but those of snap elections, as the parliament chose to replace the government through elections. In terms of legitimacy, general elections trump over everything else. A coup is commonly defined as an illegitimate seizure of power by a small group. General elections are the polar opposite, the furthest thing from a coup.
Regarding the Crimean referendum, I do have objections: international law considers referendums held under foreign military occupation illegitimate, and rightfully so. Had Hitler staged a referendum in occupied Paris after the invasion, would that have meant that the French willingly joined the Third Reich?
The Crimean referendum is nothing new. In the 1940s, the USSR also staged a series of votes to legitimize their invasions of European nations. At this point, I would consider anyone expecting me to take these referendums seriously as either severely underinformed or simply maliciously trolling.
WesolyKubeczek 14 hours ago [-]
Yes it was. Democracy is not only about casting your vote once every few years and then shutting up and staying put, it’s also about holding your elected representatives accountable.
14 hours ago [-]
11 hours ago [-]
lawn 14 hours ago [-]
How nice of you to insert some Russian bullshit narrative into the discussion.
tsimionescu 15 hours ago [-]
Because both are representations of the rule and self-determination of the people. Popular uprisings are comparable to direct voting in terms of expressing the power of the people (though of course have other major differences in terms of violence, rule of law, etc).
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
> Because both are representations of the rule and self-determination of the people.
No, not really. Having a radical group remove another totalitarian ruler doesn't automatically grant them legitimacy or any arguments involving "self determination of people".
UncleMeat 9 hours ago [-]
Is it a fair democratic vote when a very substantial number of the people that Israel claims are residents cannot participate in this vote?
ngcazz 11 hours ago [-]
your selective definition of democracy accommodates a country
- whose Basic Law 2018 declared it a Jewish supremacist state
- where 50% of the population doesn't have the right to vote, land ownership, or travel on the same roads
- and faces 99% conviction rates in military, not civil, courts
- where parties can be banned directly by government decision if it arbitrarily deems them to be anti-Jewish
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
The problems of Israeli democracy are not the ones you list.
The fundamental issue is the population of the West Bank, who, outside of Palestinian Authority areas (aka "Area A"), are largely controlled by Israel but cannot vote. Note that 1-2 million West Bank Palestinians live in Area A under the Palestinian Authority.
- Within Israel, there is a Communist Party (which rejects religion and ethnicity) and other parties (including two Arab parties).
- A key problem in Israeli democracy, which it would be helpful if you noted, is that although there are two Arab parties (and majority Jewish parties who welcome Arabs), the Arab population of Israel votes at a low rate. This results in their being under-represented in the Knesset.
- The Basic Law you refer to made zero change to who can have political power.
- The 50% you refer to is neither the right percentage, nor does it take into account areas of great Palestinian autonomy.
- Function of the legal system has never been relevant to who can vote or hold office.
If you want to reflect what is on the ground, I suggest you take in the whole picture.
hiddencost 15 hours ago [-]
Liar
9dev 14 hours ago [-]
Enlighten me, which part of my comment was a lie?
dekelpilli 7 hours ago [-]
It would quite concerning if Israel had non-Zionist (read: not in favour of the existence of Israel) parties.
vixen99 12 hours ago [-]
Not any longer but one might have thought of Britain as a theocracy at some point in the recent past insofar as members of the governing party would have put down Christian in the box marked Religion. On the other hand, in 2025, formal occasions in the UK usually take place in Christian cathedrals and churches. The King (albeit with no executive powers in the Government) is head of the Church of England - the 'Supreme Governor of the Church of England'.
Interesting that 20% of Israelis do not believe in a deity. 18% are Muslim. In Iran, Jews are 0.03% of the population.
CactusRocket 15 hours ago [-]
> In what sense Israel is not a theocracy.
I find this very disingenuous because the person you replied to was talking only about Iran, and stating that Iran is a theocracy in their opinion. They never mentioned anything about Iran, let alone stating that Israel isn't a theocracy.
So asking this question, this way, is quite strange in my opinion.
amenhotep 13 hours ago [-]
They said "theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first". If this is true - and it is their stated position - then, since Israel has nukes, either they are not a theocracy or they are begging to be nuked. The commenter has, I think reasonably, concluded that the other commenter doesn't think Israel is begging to be nuked, and is therefore addressing the apparent contradiction. It seems entirely genuous.
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
> Israel defines itself as a "jewish" state (...)
I think the "Jewish state" refers to how the country serves as the homeland for the jewish people, not how they force a religion upon others.
Israel's legal definition is "Jewish and Democratic state", which explicitly ensures "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex".
The Basic Law (their Constitution) of Israel defines it as a Jewish state. Its first page says:
The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish People, in which the State of Israel was established.
(b) The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
(c) The realization of the right to national self- determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.
Not irrespective of religion, exclusive to the Jewish People.
spwa4 13 hours ago [-]
If you have a problem with laws defining this sort of thing, you're going to have problems with the constitution of any muslim-majority country. Including ... of course Palestine.
Hamas/Gaza:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O’ Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him,”
And the west bank's government pays pensions according to how many Jews you hurt:
(No worries the "parliamentary democracy" that the WB is - hah! - promises to stop that now. Well, except for the payments)
But this is a general problem with all muslim-majority nations. Take an extremely moderate one - Morocco - defines itself as:
"A sovereign Muslim State, attached to its national unity and to its territorial integrity, the Kingdom of Morocco intends to preserve,"
ngcazz 9 hours ago [-]
Even if you take those statements at face value, Israel is the only apartheid country being discussed here.
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
Have you paid attention to who can hold power in, say, Iran? Or Saudi Arabia? Or Syria? Or Jordan?
Israel isn't any more apartheid than any of those places. Given that Israeli Arabs can and do vote (and become Medical Doctors), Israel is a heck of a lot _less_ apartheid than those places.
Consider travel... it can help you get outside the "american" box.
spwa4 4 hours ago [-]
You do realize that socialists are people who kept supporting khomeini AFTER it became clear he sent snipers, during the revolution, to attack his own people (well, the students, unions, ...) just so he could claim "zionists" killed thousands of people?
Of course this government is FAR worse, including on racism, than the worst Israel has ever been accused of. It's not going to change their minds ...
The current Iranian government started blaming Israel for everything long before they were even in power. Socialists supported them back then ... and largely now.
Clearly, one is forced to conclude, they see no problem with such actions.
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
I think you have not paid attention to European and Middle Eastern countries.
They are all ethno states.
The very concept "nation-state" is an alignment of "ethnic tribe" with "political borders"
You might want to hit a history book or two.
In this regard, Israel is more normal and places like the U.S. are abnormal. (Once you get outside the U.S....)
tdeck 14 hours ago [-]
With such a commitment to equality it's hard to believe policies like this slipped through
It's a bad law (although somewhat covered with 'good intentions', it does have a scent of racism which shouldn't exist in state laws).
However, note that the outcome was the unintentional creation of Jewish/Arabs communities in the Galilee, which actually help bring Jews and Arabs together.
It is also important to note that Arab Israelis have full rights as citizens, have representatives in the parliament and even were a part of the previous coalition. This, of course, is not the case for Palestinians in the occupied territories, and this issue MUST be resolved (one- or two-state solution, either way the current situation is unbearable).
With that, the current coalition does include extremists, and many (according to recent polls, >60%) in Israel want to see them replaced.
hiddencost 15 hours ago [-]
Absurd.
djfivyvusn 15 hours ago [-]
Who cares if they are? They're not out here calling for the destruction of all the Islamic states. Well, at least not the ones not already actively bombing them.
elif 11 hours ago [-]
All the intelligence says they weren't building nukes, but all the sudden we are to believe the narrative provided by a prolific liar who can't even articulate what it is that he wants Iran to do?
Israel started bombing Iran and they returned fire. Is trump asking the largest economic and military power in the region to sit by idle as Israel sends missiles and bombs daily? He won't clarify even when asked directly. I don't think we have any reason to believe his narrative if he can't even explain it himself.
I would also like to add that Trump himself is the one who removed IAEA inspectors from routine inspections of Iran, so occams razor would suggest this ambiguity is by design.
15155 6 hours ago [-]
> All the intelligence says they weren't building nukes
> IAEA inspectors
What are some good reasons for producing >60% HEU?
bjourne 5 hours ago [-]
> What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move.
Why are you swallowing the propaganda you've been spoon-fed?
"Gabbard: Iran is not currently developing nuclear weapons"
> you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you?
So you're saying we're here because America has mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations and this is the best move?
simonh 17 hours ago [-]
It's not so much them being a theocracy IMHO. It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you.
How well would you sleep at night?
McAlpine5892 15 hours ago [-]
> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people are taking sides on a religious war. Stay out. Stay far out. There is no winning. There is no stopping the conflict. Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. The only thing to see is human atrocities as far as the eye in the name of <your god of choice>.
> There's a state ... [that has] ... the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium
Do they? It's oft repeated. But I vaguely remember this country being sold on an Iraq invasion due to nukes. Nukes that never existed and never were close to existing. This wasn't a simple miscalculation. The nukes were entirely and knowingly fictional. And that's just one example of a bullshit made-up reason this nation has started a war to waste lives.
How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Why should I believe my country today? Why is today the day of all days that the truth is finally being told? Why is today the day that god is real and I should jump in on the bloodshed?
Your masters are lying to you, to their benefit. They didn't wake up today and decide to be honest.
imperfect_blue 14 hours ago [-]
>> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.
> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?
oa335 13 hours ago [-]
> Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian
They clearly and openly state that they want to force Palestinians off of their land and are using violence towards that end.
If there were a button to get rid of Palestinians, Israelis would “hit it twice”.
Israelis are brutalized, by the actions of Hamas and at having no choice but to fight Hamas in horrible circumstances.
Hamas could have ended the war in Gaza a year ago. Or on October 8 2023.
Do they? No. They will fight to the last Gazan child.
Is it nice that Israelis see no alternative to Gazans being resettled elsewhere? No.
Do you have a path for Gazans to go back to the mid 1990's when 100+ Gazans came to Kibbutz Nir Oz for a peace festival?
oa335 2 hours ago [-]
> Israelis are brutalized, by the actions of Hamas and at having no choice but to fight Hamas in horrible circumstances.
No matter how many times I see it, the constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me.
LtWorf 10 hours ago [-]
> Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian
Uh? So can you explain the genocide?
mhb 3 hours ago [-]
It's pretty definitively explained by an appeal to any dictionary. Like, literally.
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
Can you explain a genocide in Gaza or the West Bank both of which have growing Palestinian populations even during wartime?
(If you correct for the 100K+ who left Gaza before Egypt closed its border in 2024)
LtWorf 7 hours ago [-]
Inventing is explaining now? Ah…
samjones33 3 hours ago [-]
Inventing what, exactly?
The population growth rate in the West Bank and Gaza is higher than that of Europe.
I ain't the one having the babies... The residents of those places are.
GlacierFox 11 hours ago [-]
_How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?_
Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up.
lokimedes 15 hours ago [-]
Those with the spirit to strike, will always dominate those with a mind to moderate.
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East. Support for Israel extends beyond religious justifications.
McAlpine5892 15 hours ago [-]
It's not about democracy. If it were, we wouldn't have overthrown countless democratically elected leaders throughout South America during the 20th Century.
Our elected leaders constantly attempt to expand their own power. To maximally punish whistleblowers. Our election system is ran by a duopoly who exerts extreme power over those voicing alternative views and opinions.
About democracy, it is not.
Let's say it was though. What gives us the right to blow other countries off the face of the planet? Are we somehow so much better than everyone else because we believe we're democratic? We don't even rank in the top 10 most democratic countries. We throw more people in jail than China. Per capita AND total overall. We throw more kids in jail than any other first world country [0].
Surely, democracy does not automagically lend to treating people fairly. We have enough problems in our own damn democracy to worry about. Crazy to be starting wars to "help" someone who never asked for it. Forcing violence upon those who never consented is absolutely abhorrent.
Whose fault is that? The US and Russia have propped and warred every angle to extract as much oil as possible. The instability maintains a heavy flow of refugees into Europe, destabilising the freedoms they have there and pushing the politics further right.
The sudden switch yesterday from "they can't make nukes" to "they're a fortnight away from ICBMs" felt a little too reminiscent of Iraq twenty years ago.
If we want a stable Middle East, we have to stop bombing the shit out of it, and invest. Negotiate fairly for resources. Offer them a future. And demand Israel stop committing war crimes.
eptcyka 14 hours ago [-]
I wonder if the _negotiate fairly_ option is viable after countless generations have been bombed.
oliwarner 14 hours ago [-]
We either try, or resign to slowly killing each other until one does figure out how to wipe the other out forever.
Forced separation only deepens the hatred.
simonh 13 hours ago [-]
It can be simultaneously true that Iran is sitting on a huge pike of precursor materials for nuclear weapons, and is not currently actually making bombs. Last week she was emphasising the latter, now she’s emphasising the former. Disingenuous? Sure.
Trump and his people are children in the back of a car that found mummy’s gun in her purse. They have no idea what they are doing. I understand what Israel is doing but the US administration are clueless and rudderless.
throwaway7839 15 hours ago [-]
Israel is the only country with tiered citizenship.
It is the only country that has constitutional preference for an ethnic group instead of equality of all subjects/citizens.
It is also the only country with automatic citizenship based on religion.
It is also the only country with nuclear weapons but not part of NPT. Even North Korea is a member of NPT.
The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore.
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
- There is only one Israeli citizenship. Jews have it. Israeli Arab Muslims have it. Israeli Arab Christians have it. Druze have it. It's the same.
Is there discrimination, in all directions? Yup. The world is a tribal place.
But you should move on from that "tiered" thing. I live here. I have been doing a project with Arabs for the last two weeks. We have lunch together most days. Move on.
- Constitution -- You clearly have not read the constitutions of Syria, Saudi Arabia, or many other countries. Ethnic groups are all over the identities of most of the world's countries.
- Automatic citizenship - How narrow do you define this? African Americans can go to Liberia and other countries of Africa. Until just twenty years ago or so anyone with a German grandparent could automatically get German citizenship. If you are Cuban you can get American citizenship. Are you thinking this through?
- NPT, I am not sure anyone cares, but this is very different than your other topics.
adastra22 14 hours ago [-]
The 18% of Israeli citizens that are Muslim are 100% equal to their Jewish brethren under the law. There is no tiered citizenship.
I don’t think you understand what you linked to. That is about government census forms that track ethnicity, same as any other country. Nationality here doesn’t mean citizenship, but rather something closer to “tribe.”
Some well meaning citizens said “I want to check Israeli rather than Jew, Druze, Arab, etc.” Except Israeli is not a nationality in this sense. Nor is Jewish, on this form, a religious identification. It is a way of tracking, for census reasons, something closer to ethnicity. Not for nefarious purposes, but just to track demographics.
throwaway97894 13 hours ago [-]
That is a very dishonest interpretation not only because the national registry is not a mere question of census but of identity, but because the Supreme Court clearly outlines that it in black and white that it is about the question of Jewish supremacy.
from the article:
> the court explained that doing so would have “weighty implications” on the State of Israel and could pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people.
adastra22 2 hours ago [-]
I think you are dishonestly interpreting it, but I'm not going to engage with a throwaway account.
packetlost 13 hours ago [-]
> The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore.
That is a very strong claim that needs very strong evidence.
throwaway97894 13 hours ago [-]
You have been provided with a list of items that undermines the claim of democracy, the evidence is also pretty strong. What else do you want?
dreghgh 14 hours ago [-]
There's only 3 problems with this old claim.
1. You have to define 'Israel' quite carefully to make it work. Palestinians in East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. Is East Jerusalem part of Israel or not?
2. There are several other democracies in the Middle East, for example Iraq and Lebanon.
3. Some of the countries which aren't democratic, would be democratic, except that representative governments were overthrown by the United States, in part to enforce cooperation with Israel, against the wishes of most of the people in the country. For example, Egypt.
samjones33 7 hours ago [-]
East Jerusalem is ... not a nut anyone here is going to crack.
What do those folks want for themselves? Be part of the Palestinian Authority? (Not the ones I have been doing a remodel with.) Make them part of Jordan?
Jerusalem is disputed territory. That makes it an uncomfortable mess, for more or less everyone.
The region needs more efforts toward peace, and less black and white, good/bad labeling.
East Jerusalemites are in limbo waiting for peace.
It's Jerusalem. It's a strange place.
CalChris 15 hours ago [-]
Iran was democratic … until we overthrew them.
hopelite 15 hours ago [-]
We, the British or the Americans, or those who control both?
hopelite 15 hours ago [-]
You seem to believe “democracy” is some kind of magic spell or something? This “democracy” just perpetrated and are continuing to perpetrate the worst kind of wanton and sadistic genocide in full view of the world and are doing it in high definition and with impunity. America is supposedly also a democracy and we just in fact bombed a place objectively without any provocation, in violation of our own supreme law, and being utterly counter to American interests, because an alien and foreign interest group has a stranglehold on America.
Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things
alfiedotwtf 15 hours ago [-]
Iran used to be a democracy in the Middle East until the US got involved
15 hours ago [-]
reillyse 15 hours ago [-]
A shining beacon of democracy.
compiler_queen 12 hours ago [-]
> Support for Israel extends beyond religious justifications
Yes, it extends that support to cover apartheid colonial occupation, more-than-likely genocide by all the accepted definitions, and the usual smattering of targeting civilians, executing paramedics in marked ambulances and ethic cleansing.
wun0ne 15 hours ago [-]
Israel, the democratic country whose prime minister appears to be deliberately prolonging the current conflict in Gaza and starting a new war with Iran to avoid facing corruption charges?
Hikikomori 14 hours ago [-]
Bad hasbara.
LtWorf 14 hours ago [-]
Israel has elections. So does Russia. Is Russia a democracy?
fluorinerocket 15 hours ago [-]
I could really care less what theit form of government is
Tylkwvld 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
petre 14 hours ago [-]
> starting a new war with Iran
Hamas has started in on the 7th of october 2023, effectively rolling back years of negotiations done by Yasser Arafat. Where do you think they've got the weapons from? Netanyahu is no better, but they offered him the perfect motive for a response.
dreghgh 14 hours ago [-]
> Where do you think they've got the weapons from?
Ultimately, from the United States taxpayer. Who supply the Egyptian military government, who turn a small proportion over to the Islamists to keep them from too much rabble-rousing. Who smuggle them to Hamas.
Both Qatar and Iran supply money and other forms of support to Hamas. But no RPG makes it into Gaza (across a shorter than 10 mile border) without the Egyptian military sort of knowing about it.
> Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet.
What? Israel is 2000 Kms away from Iran, and would want nothing do to with them if not for Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan and policy...
> Do they?
The IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, hardly a "bullshit made-up excuse"
ngcazz 9 hours ago [-]
None of what is going on in the Middle East is a "religious war" as such. That's a thought-terminating cliche that you're putting in practice pretty clearly here.
throw310822 16 hours ago [-]
All this talk about nuclear weapons is purposefully misleading. Iran had agreements in place to keep its nuclear program under strict and thorough international checks, and was currently negotiating a new one. The original deal was scrapped on Netanyahu's request, and the bombing was started by Netanyahu to prevent a new one.
Israel doesn't fear Iran's nukes. Israel fears an economically functional Iran and uses the wmd excuse to sabotage it as much as possible. The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.
nine_k 15 hours ago [-]
Realistically, a secular Iran would be the only real ally of Israel in the region. This is how it was under the shah, until 1979.
Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now.
(Edit: typo)
dttze 15 hours ago [-]
You’re like the gusanos that say Cuba was so much better before the revolution. Without mentioning it was only great for the landowning slavers.
Why do you think there was a revolution?
HK-NC 13 hours ago [-]
Well I'd argue 50% of the population got a raw deal in the revolution at least.
15 hours ago [-]
nine_k 14 hours ago [-]
Cubans kept massively supporting Fidel for quite some time, and quite explicitly, even through the disastrous Communist economic policies.
Iranians keep protesting; last few years have seen several large protests, involving hundreds of thousands, and continuing for months. The popularity just isn't there.
Regarding revolutions, it's quite often that a relatively small group of like-minded people capture the control, and the majority is weakly supporting them, or is even weakly opposed but complies. The French revolution was mostly about some nobility wanting to remove the monarchy that oppressed them, along with the rest; most of the population wasn't overtly anti-monarchy, and not even covertly so, but it did not like the monarchy's pressure either. The Russian revolution was "communist" and "proletarian", but even by their own Marxist accounting, proletarians were less than 10% of Russian population, and communists, much fewer still. Nevertheless, they subdued most of the Russian empire.
The Iranian revolution was also done by a group of highly religious people who were fed up with the shah's secularization reforms. The shah, AFAICT, was a guy a bit like Putin, or Saudi kings: efficient and geared towards prosperity of the country, but quite authoritarian. The fact that e.g. the educated urban population in Iran wasn't happy about authoritarianism does not imply that the same people were (or are) huge fans of theocracy. Actually, the theocracy ended up even more oppressive.
inglor_cz 13 hours ago [-]
The Cuban revolution was more of a coup than a widespread national uprising.
It was a blind alley anyway. Zero countries that embraced Marxism-Leninism were able to reach prosperity on that ideology. Meanwhile, a lot of desperately poor countries of the 1950s are nowadays reasonably well of, on the basis of a normal, regulated market economy.
LtWorf 10 hours ago [-]
Do you have sources for all of this fantasy spin on history?
inglor_cz 10 hours ago [-]
AFAIK Castro had never more than 3 thousand armed men at his side, and often much fewer, down to lower hundreds, spending much of the protracted conflict hiding in the countryside.
A revolution is something in which a significant part of a nation actively participates, not something that almost the entire population sits out passively.
Of course we can debate what is the necessary fraction, but 3000 militants isn't a big deal in a country of several million. Every Iraqi cleric in 2010 was able to put together a bigger militia than that.
lostlogin 15 hours ago [-]
> This is how it was under the shah, until 1979.
Sort of? The US played a role in that shit show and it wasn’t all happy days under the Shah.
Not "happy", but Iran was quite a bit more sober, not hostile towards Israel, and relatively secular.
(Similarly, China under Deng Xiaoping was not a paragon of political freedom at all, but it was quite a bit more sober than under Mao Zedong. The US administration had tons of shortcomings under president Biden, but it was in quite a bit less of disarray than under president Trump.)
praptak 15 hours ago [-]
Shah was a dictator propped up by US. There's no going back to these times.
CalChris 15 hours ago [-]
Installed. We overthrew Mossadegh. We overthrew a democracy.
nine_k 14 hours ago [-]
Indeed, it was a shameful act.
throw310822 15 hours ago [-]
> Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran,
Israel is currently engaged in genocide, how would it be good for it to benefit enormously?
foxglacier 14 hours ago [-]
People keep saying genocide but has it been established objectively? I seem to remember the ICJ deciding they weren't, but that was some time ago.
tdeck 14 hours ago [-]
> ? I seem to remember the ICJ deciding they weren't
Is this some reality distortion field? This never happened. Instead the ICJ issued multiple explicit orders to Israel that Israel has violated and the genocide case is still ongoing.
qwery 11 hours ago [-]
People keep questioning the definition of genocide, as if finding some technical distinction will absolve the perpetrators.
If you actually care about international law, you might be interested to know that the ICC has issued (standing) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Israeli Minister for Defense for various crimes against humanity and the use of starvation in warfare.
Krasnol 14 hours ago [-]
Who cares about ICJ or any International Law these days anymore?
Yeah, I mean we can still use it (or it's slowness and uselessness) to hide behind it but the facts are on the table. Gaza looks like post-war Germany at this point. People ARE starving. Meanwhile Israel expands to the east. Also illegally.
Tylkwvld 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
k7sune 6 hours ago [-]
How about the UN censuring Iran for not complying with the agreement? Was this a manufactured consensus? I don't see anyone mentioning IAEA's decision here.
> The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.
Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak.
compsciphd 11 hours ago [-]
its not circumstantial.
Even Iran has publicly said that they have enriched to 60%. 60% is not needed for civilian uses and only useful for research in how to make it go boom.
8note 3 hours ago [-]
thats still circumstantial.
they could show research that theyre doing for how to make nuclear power using 60% enriched uranium. nothing says they have to use an existing design
LtWorf 14 hours ago [-]
Remember all that evidence about iraq? Remember the british guy who worked at the ministry and went to the news saying there was no evidence and then suicided without leaving his own fingerprints on the weapon?
simonh 4 hours ago [-]
The uranium enrichment is confirmed by the Iranians, the have published pictures of their leaders inspecting the centrifuges. You can find them with a quick search.
energy123 15 hours ago [-]
Iran has violated the NPT so many times at this stage that no good faith observer can say what you've said here with a straight face. This is just using words to persuade for political purposes, it is not analysis.
throw310822 10 hours ago [-]
Iran has violated the NPT because there were agreements in place for it to respect it, and the agreements have been violated by the other side. An action that must have consequences, otherwise there is no point in making deals with anyone.
petre 14 hours ago [-]
Sure, they're making weapons grade uranium to exhibit it in the Museum of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense in Teheran.
FilosofumRex 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
9dev 16 hours ago [-]
These positions are not mutually exclusive though. You can both be in favor of stripping Irans ability to build nukes and oppose Israel’s settlements.
AlecSchueler 15 hours ago [-]
Israel's settlements are the reason Iran feels the need for such developments though.
I can oppose IRA violence and British imperialism at the same time but if we're having a reasonable conversation we have to recognise that British colonial force in Ireland is what drove people to form the IRA.
shusaku 14 hours ago [-]
> Israel's settlements are the reason Iran feels the need for such developments though.
Even Iran’s leaders would laugh in your face at such a naive statement, you should reconsider your media diet
mrkstu 14 hours ago [-]
You know that isn’t true. Israel could withdraw to the 1969 borders and Iran would be just as dedicated to destroying it.
AlecSchueler 13 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure how that contradicts what I'm saying.
To continue the analogy that's like going back to 1900 and saying Britain could pull out of Ireland except for Ulster and there'd still be people calling for further decolonisation.
spiderfarmer 15 hours ago [-]
Iran is stupid trying to covertly get to a nuclear bomb, Israel is very stupid with those illegal settlements. It’s costing them both a lot of sympathy.
ivell 15 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that most countries support a two nation solution. I have not seen any Iranian statement that accepts this. On the other hand I have seen them consistently calling for outright destruction of Israel. Given their declared intend of destruction, no one in right mind would allow them the capability of destruction.
dlahoda 14 hours ago [-]
just exactly predating goverment was friendly with israel:
Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities.
Before the Ottomans and various Islamic conquests it was almost entirely Christian/Roman (as was the whole Middle East). Before that Jewish.
And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there.
Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN which you reference.
throw310822 16 hours ago [-]
> and a fairly even mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims
False. The population in 1800 was ~90% Muslim, ~8% Christian.
> let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN
The UN had no authority to partition other people's land.
sgt 15 hours ago [-]
Wrong. They were given the authority by general consensus after WW2. Maybe a poor choice, but it's not at all the responsibility of current Israelis to think about what their grandparents did. For a Gen Z Israeli, there's only one country.
hajile 10 hours ago [-]
If a majority agree to rob you, it is no longer robbery?
fastball 16 hours ago [-]
If they don't control it, it's not the "other people's" land either.
Land belongs to whoever controls it. That's it. That is all it will ever be.
If there is not some higher power (e.g. the UN, who you say does not have authority), you have no recourse.
No matter what land it is or who they are: nobody currently living was there first. The only claim is always "I was the last to control it". But none of us are the first.
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
The censuses were always flip-flopping back and forth, until the 1880s. You cherry picked one nice one, but I could check pick over half a dozen censuses that show Jewish majority during the 19th century - no less than the amount of censuses that promote the other competing narrative. And all the later censuses, after 1880, show Jewish majority. That was over three decades before the fall of the Ottoman empire.
Source for census data:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusalem
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
From wikipedia's article on the history of Palestine:
> "Most of Palestine's population, estimated to be around 200,000 in the early years of Ottoman rule, lived in villages. The largest cities were Gaza, Safad and Jerusalem, each with a population of around 5,000–6,000."
That's in the 16th century. Almost no Jews at that time either.
motorest 15 hours ago [-]
> That's in the 16th century.
OP's point was "Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities."
What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then?
> Almost no Jews at that time either.
What a wild claim: almost no Jews in places like Jerusalem? Please cite whatever source you have to make such an extraordinary claim.
throw310822 14 hours ago [-]
> What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then
Exactly the part that you left out: that the Jewish presence (before zionist immigration began) was of any relevance in the demography of the region.
dotancohen 16 hours ago [-]
I've never understood the argument of Muslim Land or Arab Land. If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?
> Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]
(Links a page that shows the exact opposite)
> If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleanse 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
> Links to a page that shows the exact opposite
This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources. All the censuses in the decades before the fall of the Ottoman empire show a Jewish majority. And for the century preceding that, the censuses flipped back and forth.
> Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleans 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
No. The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish) and the majority of the rest Arab (not Muslim, not Palestinian, and not Egyptian or Jordanian). The Arab states rejected this, and opened a war with the newly formed Israel. Many Israeli leaders pleaded with the Arab residents not to heed the Arab states' calls to evacuate. The situation in Haifa is well documented, I know this from living with Arabs in Haifa two decades ago. They tell how the Haifa mayor pleaded with their families to remain in 1948.
throw310822 15 hours ago [-]
> This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources.
Exactly. The Ottoman rule of Palestine spans 400 years, and the graph at the top of the page you linked shows that Jews became a majority in Jerusalem only at the very end of it, following zionist immigration at the end of the 19th century.
> The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish)
The problem is that this isn't reddit and people actually read the sources. This is the text of the Partition Plan:
"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence..."
Why do you have such a problem with Zionist immigration that made Jerusalem a Jewish-majority city? It was legal immigration allowed by Ottoman Empire. Do you see Muslims immigrating to Europe in the same light? Many previously "white" cities in Europe are now Muslim. Should Europeans call it "Muslim occupation of white land"? That sounds pretty racist. Why double standard?
throw310822 14 hours ago [-]
Ah no, I have no problem with it, as much as Palestinians had little problem with the tens, and then hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to their land.
Of course if the UN were suddenly to declare that half of my country is now assigned to them only to build their, say, Arab state- then I would be quite pissed. Wouldn't you?
UltraSane 6 hours ago [-]
"their land."
It wasn't "their" land, it was Ottoman land and they let Jews migrate there because Jews paid for the land.
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
From Wikipedia:
> The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903 ... An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated.
Jerusalem was already Jewish majority before 1881. And the large waves of the movement were towards the end, not towards the beginning.
throw310822 15 hours ago [-]
Yes, as we said, zionist immigration to Palestine began at the end of the 19th century. Nothing to do with the small historical Jewish population of Palestine or Jerusalem.
FilosofumRex 15 hours ago [-]
Yes indeed, if white British people were expelled from their lands and their homes confiscated by anyone, Norse, Germanic or Russian, it'd be considered ethnic cleansing and a war crime.
The jews of Ottoman era were Sephardic and Mizrahi jews of N. Africa, not the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis of Germany, France and Russia.
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
Thank you for your support.
After the UN divided the holy land into an Israeli and an Arab state, the Arabs began their ethnic cleaning campaign. That is why there were zero Jews left in Gaza or the West Bank after the war. The war that was started with the stated goal of eliminating the Jews.
And note that despite Arab calls for the Arabs to evacuate the holy land, it remained 20% Arab. And let's not get started on the Jews in the other 20 plus Arab states. What at happened to them?
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
> Ashkenazis
A word which literally means "from the Levant", where Ashkenaz (Noah's descendent) had settled.
UltraSane 15 hours ago [-]
Like how the Arab countries expelled Jews after Israel was founded? The double standard about Israel and Arab colonization and ethnic cleansing is absurd.
I actually do know the "Muslim lands" reference. Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever. It's a conquest tactic. It gets slightly reframed to be tolerable for westerners by invoking the idea that they're "indigenous", when they're largely Arabs who committed genocide against the previous peoples.
> when they're largely Arabs who committed genocide against the previous peoples.
So what area are arabs from? You know there are arab jews and christians right?
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula. After they accepted Islam in the 7th century, they turned to conquest other areas.
This is all well documented in Arab sources, they are very proud of this.
dudefeliciano 15 hours ago [-]
>they accepted Islam in the 7th century
Oh i didn't realize we're going back more than a millennia. Well, in that case every modern nation state is the product of one form of genocide or another - the USA being the worst genocidal state, going back just 500 years.
>The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula
Seems silly to me to claim a land that "your people" inhabited centuries and millennia ago, as it honestly seems silly to me talk about "racial features" when talking about humans. Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
dotancohen 15 hours ago [-]
> Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
Not by virtue of being the same race, but by virtue of being the offspring of parents who are proud of their heritage and teach their children.
Denying the existence of Arab culture, of which the Arabs are (rightly, in my opinion) very proud of, is racism. Not everybody has the same values and customs as you do.
dudefeliciano 15 hours ago [-]
Can you mention one cultural trait that an arab jew, muslim, and atheist would share?
That's like saying there is a european culture, it's nonsense.
"Whilst there are a great number of perspectives that can be taken on the subject, it is impossible to form a single, all-embracing concept of European culture."
Literally the second sentence in that wiki
vntok 12 hours ago [-]
Do you frequently stop reading articles two sentences in? It's amazing how much knowledge and intelligence you must be missing.
Please do keep reading past. The next sentence (literally sentence #3) gives you: Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:
And then a detailed list of shared-culture-related items.
- A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;[5][4]
- A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";[5]
- A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;[5]
- A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another.[5]
- Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe.
And then there are 15 categories from Music to Science to History, listing cultural similitudes or shared values.
AlecSchueler 15 hours ago [-]
> Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever.
What are you basing this on? Are "religious" Muslims some kind of True Scots Muslims? I'm willing to bet that if I speak to any of my Muslim neighbours none of them will agree with this.
LtWorf 14 hours ago [-]
Well if you go back enough… all english people are actually vikings who committed genocide against the britons.
And all swedish people are steppe barbarians who committed genocide against the local sami people.
dismalaf 12 hours ago [-]
Source on Swedes being steppe barbarians? Most historians agree that Vikings originated in Scandinavia. Sami peoples originated in northern Russia and moved to the furthest north regions of Scandinavia. The Vikings were also more concerned with seafaring and raiding to the south and west and all the history I know of is that they coexisted mostly peacefully (Vikings would trade with the Sami). Conflict arose centuries after the Viking age.
So why was it called Palestine Partition Plan, and not Israeli partition plan:
"Palestine Partition Plan" is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), adopted on November 29, 1947. This resolution, officially titled "Future Government of Palestine," recommended the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem and its environs to be placed under a special international regime."
fastball 15 hours ago [-]
"Palestine" is a term which pre-dates Islam (coming from the Greek "Palaistine"), so I don't think you are making the point you are trying to make.
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
Yup, Palestine is a name for the land, not the people. It is a Roman era corruption of Phoenician.
dismalaf 12 hours ago [-]
No, Philistine (and all the variants) comes from a Greek word for "uncouth" and is a word for the ancient Philistines given by their neighbours; it's unknown what the Philistines called themselves. The Philistines weren't the Phoenicians, they were more recent invaders (possibly some of the "Sea People"). For one, the Philistines were Aegean and the Phoenicians were Semitic. The Philistines also disappeared (either killed or assimilated) while the Phoenicians spawned Carthage (the ones in the Levant probably just assimilated over time as many powers controlled the area after them).
It only became the name for the land after the Bar Kockba revolt, the Romans named it such specifically to spite the Jews. And then it stuck when various powers controlled the land over time (Romans/East Romans aka. Byzantines, Caliphate, Ottomans, British).
adastra22 2 hours ago [-]
Interesting, thank you. TIL.
AlecSchueler 15 hours ago [-]
> Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN
Who proposed the Balfour Declaration 30 years prior?
iamacyborg 15 hours ago [-]
> And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there.
Presumably during one of the frequent rounds of forceful expulsion from European states.
woodpanel 15 hours ago [-]
Exactly. Ill intended actors (Soviets, competing European interests, Islamists etc.) even propped up the propaganda fiction about the "evil" Crusaders, while in fact the Crusaders fought against colonization.
The entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came.
golol 16 hours ago [-]
You can oppose something or you can create terorrist militias to attack Israel and destabilize its neighboring countries.
FilosofumRex 16 hours ago [-]
Your "terrorists" militias predate formation of Islamic Republic of Iran, in 1979. Yasser Arafat, and all other Palestinian liberators were also labeled as terrorists.
Can you name one Palestinian who has fought against Israel's occupation and is not considered a terrorist by you?
If you fight in an active civil war you are not a terrorist (1948 Arab-Israeli war)
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of guerilla warfare you are not a terrorist. (Many palestinian fighters when there is an active conflict with Israel)
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of relative peace, and your reignition of violence has no goal of achieving anything for your people, you are probably not a terrorist, but probably doing something wrong and stupid and horrible that hurts your own civilians, driven by nationalism or ideology or whatever. (Palestinian fighters on October 7 that struck military bases for example).
If you strike civilian targets or tage hostages, you are a terrorist. And worse if you do it at a time of relative peace to ignite violence against your own people.
Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi's have engaged in plenty of the latter since a long time.
By the way, if you level a building with 8 militants and 20 civilians that is brutal urban warcare but not terrorism. If you go to a festival and kill predominantly hundreds of civilians, that's terrorism.
dontTREATonme 15 hours ago [-]
Can you name a single Palestinian who has actually moved the needle on a functioning democratic Palestinian state? Every single current and former Palestinian leader has been heavily theocratic, has pledged to kill Jews wherever they are and has never considered sharing any of whatever power he’s gotten with anyone else.
AlecSchueler 15 hours ago [-]
Do you stop to ask what creates the environment where the most extreme views flourish and gain traction?
dontTREATonme 15 hours ago [-]
I always marvel at the extreme racism required to so thoroughly dehumanize an entire population.
10 hours ago [-]
Ray20 14 hours ago [-]
Islamist majority?
AlecSchueler 13 hours ago [-]
Nope, Islamism is an extreme position so that gets you no further in the answering the question. What set the stage for an Islamist majority? Again I assert that extreme politics don't develop in vacuums.
golol 7 hours ago [-]
The thing is it doesn't help. Yes of course the horrible situation of the palestinians promotes extremism, but you still have to face that there is a lot of extremism. What was Israel to do before October 7 (besides making sure Oct 7 could not happen)? Of course there are ppints where history could have gone in a better direction but I really don't see an easy way for Israel to achieve a better situation. Say they had withdraw from the west bank in 2018 for some reason. Who says that Oct 7 would still not have happened on a much greater scale? In fact I find it quite likely that it would. And then you might be looking at 3000 dead Israelis instead. The only rational reason for the Oct 7 attacks I can see is that Hamas wants to incite as much violence as possible to put as much political pressure as possible on Israel due to the inevitable retaliation. So Oct 7 would have made even more sense, as the deoccupation of the west bank is far from the total of their political goals.
dontTREATonme 8 hours ago [-]
And here you are continuing to dehumanize and remove all agency for an entire religion now. Truly the bigotry required to hold these beliefs is breathtaking.
AlecSchueler 7 hours ago [-]
I'm not doing that in any way. Islamism != Islam, and I'm not suggesting that the entire population of following Islamist beliefs, only that there's an environment where it can gain traction.
Please explain your reading if you're going to make such personal attacks.
dontTREATonme 7 hours ago [-]
You’re missing the point because you’re so unaware of your own enormous bigotry.
All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
You do not believe the above.
AlecSchueler 6 hours ago [-]
I'm honestly not sure if this is satire or why you feel the need to tell me what I believe.
> All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
And I'm not sure why you feel I don't recognise the agency of Muslims?
As I said previously please make an argument or explain your position and I'll respond to it, but it feels absurd to entertain these seemingly baseless ad hominems.
I grew up in a conflict zone and feel that I have some understanding of the group dynamics. That's totally reasonable and I encourage you to ask yourself if your apparent anger and incredulity here is misplaced.
dontTREATonme 5 hours ago [-]
You’re speaking in innuendo so I’m responding in kind. Plainly state your argument, which you haven’t done yet, instead opting for an odd vaguely veiled bigotry about Muslims’ ability to make their own choices.
AlecSchueler 4 hours ago [-]
I'm saying that Western colonial practices and violent Zionism created a situation where many people in Palestine, and beyond, felt no other choice but to support a violent counter campaign. Your turn.
tdeck 14 hours ago [-]
This is like complaining that Nat Turner didn't move the needle on moving the US toward universal suffrage.
dontTREATonme 8 hours ago [-]
Right because slaves in the American south were offered freedom tens of times but refused it always bec it might have involved some compromise they didn’t like. These childish comparisons don’t even pass the sniff test.
tdeck 4 hours ago [-]
When were the Palestinians able to exercise their legally affirmed right of return? I must have missed that.
orwin 14 hours ago [-]
No? The issue US had with the PLF is that it was controlled by Marxist. the theocratic pro-palestine movements didn't start until the 90s.
UltraSane 15 hours ago [-]
All of that Palestine resistance to Israel has accomplished nothing except misery for Palestinians.
Hikikomori 14 hours ago [-]
They should just let the second Holocaust happen?
golol 7 hours ago [-]
The west bank seems to not be doing so bad compared to Gaza.
UltraSane 7 hours ago [-]
You should stop lying about a non-existent genocide. Israel just wants to live in peace. This is why 20% of the Israel population is Arab and 0% of Gaza and the West Bank are Jewish.
Hikikomori 6 hours ago [-]
Just living in peace while stealing the homes and land of the locals.
UltraSane 3 hours ago [-]
"Just living in peace while stealing the homes and land of the locals."
No. Jews migrated to Ottoman controlled land legally and paid for it. Palestinians were offered their own country but rejected that offer in favor of trying to expel the Jews and taking their land. Then they spend the next 70 years trying and failing to destroy Israel and rejecting every offer of their own country.
Hikikomori 1 hours ago [-]
The Nakba was a big nothingburger and nothing is going in in the west bank right?
This is getting old, do you have any fresh hasbara for me?
UltraSane 19 minutes ago [-]
The Nakba happened when Palestinians foolishly rejected the offer from the UN for their own country and decided to destroy Israel instead. They failed miserably just like they have been failing ever since.
Palestinians need to take responsibility for reacting to the formation of Israel in the most self-destructive way possible.
dartharva 14 hours ago [-]
Anyone who unironically attributes any land to be Muslim, Jewish or of any other religion must be immediately dealt with.
Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion.
edanm 15 hours ago [-]
> Iran opposition to Israel's occupation of Muslim lands and territories, predates the current government of Iran.
And yet, the previous government of Iran had friendly relations with Israel, as do some other Arab and Muslim countries.
The US also has friendly relations with countries with whom it disagrees vehemently, and that do (IMO) far worse things than Israel does.
fortran77 16 hours ago [-]
A complete inversion of history. What an insane take!
alex1138 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
15 hours ago [-]
pbhjpbhj 15 hours ago [-]
Israel occupies lands belonging to the Biblical patriarch Jacob. That was something like 1800 BCE, two and a half millennia before Mohammed. Islam refers to Jacob, as does the Torah/Old Testament as "Israel".
I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either.
bambax 15 hours ago [-]
That's a ridiculous position. We can't organize today's world based on who was where 4 millennia ago. (If we did, most if not all countries would immediately cease to exist, starting of course with the US but not limited to them.)
samaltmanfried 14 hours ago [-]
Assuming this claim were true, which it isn't, the modern Israelis have genetically nothing in common with the Jews of the old testament. They don't have the same culture, religion, language or genetics.
ivell 15 hours ago [-]
I find historical claims like this not very convincing. 1800 BCE looked very different from today and if people from old civilizations start claiming their land, we would not see any end of wars. Should Italy claim most of Europe because Romans had it under their control?
quietbritishjim 14 hours ago [-]
You make it sound like the dispute is about who has some ancient religious right to the land. It's true that both sides claim that but it's totally disingenuous to pretend that is the reason for so much Arab anger.
People still have a living memory of specific properties in specific locations that they were forced out of and are now occupied by other families, often with some of their relatives killed in the process That applies both to places in Israel proper (displaced in 1940s to 1960s) and to Gaza and the West Bank (in the time since then). Even before the most recent war in Gaza, any Palestinian could be forced out of their home at any moment by an Israeli settler with no recourse.
kikimora 15 hours ago [-]
Last time I checked history books said Britain donated land to Jews. At the time Britain took house land there were no state and no nation called Palestinians, just tribes. Since then Palestinians formed as a nation.
So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is.
bambax 15 hours ago [-]
> Britain donated land to Jews
Land it didn't own. Most people can be very generous with what they don't have.
kikimora 13 hours ago [-]
Agree, but my point is in the question how to untangle the mess we have today.
chgs 14 hours ago [-]
You are arguing in favour of the land allocations in 1948?
kikimora 13 hours ago [-]
I’m asking for realistic ideas how to deal jews and palestinians occupying same land, hating each other and having no where to go from that land.
LtWorf 14 hours ago [-]
If you start from made up premises, the conclusion is also made up.
Try to read a non fantasy sionist history book…
kikimora 13 hours ago [-]
There is no conclusion on my part. There is an ask for reasonable ideas how to untangle the mess between jews and palestinians.
LtWorf 10 hours ago [-]
If you start from made up premises, you will not be able to judge "reasonable ideas".
kikimora 9 hours ago [-]
So I’m not good enough for you to share your ideas, did I get it right? You realize this is not how people reach consensus? If you cannot give me a compelling argument what makes you think jews and arabs would be happy with your ideas?
compiler_queen 15 hours ago [-]
> How well would you sleep at night?
Well, considering that Israeli's are occupying land that rightfully belongs to someone else, I'd say not very well indeed. It's the final major European colonial outpost, and its fighting hard not to go the way of Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and a long long list of others.
elcritch 13 hours ago [-]
Even if you believe Israelis don’t have a right to the land, it’s still not a colonial outpost. That’s just lazy European and American self important intellectualizing in my opinion.
First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries.
Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations.
The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers.
It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced.
Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return.
kanbara 13 hours ago [-]
you do know that jews come from the current state of israel right? and that they lived there before the founding of said state? and that, no, neither group of 7M people are going to pack up and leave.
compiler_queen 12 hours ago [-]
This is no more relevant than the guys in the OAS banging the table and claiming 2M Frenchmen have always lived in Algeria. It's not the age of exploration any more, you can no more rock up on someone else's patch, declare it terra nullis and start building condos. What's worse again, is trying to make it some religious thing... this book here says I own all you guy's land because the book says God gave it to us guys and not yous.
bambax 15 hours ago [-]
> and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you
Maybe, but obviously the other side thinks exactly the same.
Religious wars were lots of fun five centuries ago. They will be funnier still in the nuclear age.
Alex_L_Wood 13 hours ago [-]
Ah, yes, Israel famously publicly declaring that its' holy mission is to destroy Iran. Happened so many times, yes.
_tik_ 9 hours ago [-]
Then how is that any different from what the USA has done. Bombing and destroying many countries in the name of spreading democracy?
mykowebhn 13 hours ago [-]
> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
I believe this is very important to highlight, and, unfortunately, many Iranians will suffer because of the Iranian government's views.
But I do believe there are viewpoints held on both sides that can make achieving peace in that region extremely difficult. Consider these two video excerpts (You only need to watch about 10 seconds for each)
What's the reason of incompatibility of Islam and Jewish religion?
elcritch 12 hours ago [-]
Nothing in most of their beliefs. They’re both monotheistic and similar in many regards as Islam largely inherited its tenants from both Judaism and Christianity.
Jews were often well treated and flourished in the earlier Islamic caliphates.
But with the formation of a Jewish Israel the conflict. Generally in Islamic belief there must be an Islamic caliphate with Sharia Law. Jerusalem is considered one of the holy sites of Islam and therefore belongs to that caliphate.
That’s contrasted with Judaism and Israel being the land promised to the Jews. Though modern Israel was largely founded by secular Jews so it’s a bit more complicated on that front.
tharmas 16 hours ago [-]
Israel has nukes, so why would they be afraid of Iran?
The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. The price the put on human life (their own people as much as anyone else) is low, and they're all for martyrdom. With Iran, you cannot assume it's a just a deterrent in a cold war. You have to assume an increased likelihood that they will actually use them.
lostlogin 15 hours ago [-]
> The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult.
Compare the number of deaths caused by Iranian weapons and those caused by Israeli weapons in the last year. Or 5 years, or 10.
Do you have some other way of defining ‘death cult’?
raffraffraff 14 hours ago [-]
A death cult doesn't care about deaths in it's own population as long as it wipes out it's enemy. A death cult prizes martyrdom.
lostlogin 3 hours ago [-]
That’s one way to justify the deaths I guess. It’s all Iran’s fault.
tharmas 7 hours ago [-]
Only the USA has ever used Nukes.
djfivyvusn 15 hours ago [-]
Not only that, they were planning to give them to Hezbollah. The brain-dead takes I'm hearing about this shitty war amazes me.
deepsun 16 hours ago [-]
The main point of having nukes is not using them. The moment one uses them -- they lost.
Nukes are good as a deterrent, not good as a weapon.
JumpCrisscross 15 hours ago [-]
Same reason the U.S. and USSR were afraid of each other in the Cold War.
shusaku 14 hours ago [-]
People are just fear mongering to suggest Iran would use them or give them to those who would. The real issue here is that once you have them, you basically entrench yourself as a regional power. If the regime started falling out of favor, all their neighbors would be obliged to come to their aid to protect the nukes. Also, you would be far more limited in how you fight your proxy war. These are the things the involved parties are considering, not Armageddon fantasies.
dismalaf 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
lostlogin 15 hours ago [-]
Would they? How would they deliver it? If they were caught trying to do it, what would happen?
Why is an Iranian weapon somehow different do one held by any other country? Countries with them usually don’t use them, and the one that has is attacking Iran.
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
MaxPock 16 hours ago [-]
They woke up and started bombing Israel for no apparent reason or they are responding to Israeli attacks ?
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
> They woke up and started bombing Israel for no apparent reason or they are responding to Israeli attacks ?
You failed to answer my question. Why?
Check out YouTube and see the high rate of ballistic missiles thrown at Israel. Those existed for years, and were developed for this exact purpose. It just so happened they didn't have the nuclear warhead yet.
I repeat the question: are you really asking why a country would be afraid of a regime which is literally raining ballistic missiles over them?
MaxPock 14 hours ago [-]
1.Israel bombed Iran
2.Iran is bombing Israel back
How is it supposed to work ?
9dev 16 hours ago [-]
Reducing the Middle East conflict so much makes the entire discussion useless. If you want to point at someone guilty, look at the British who fucked up Palestine big time. Everything since then is a spiral of revenge and spite.
snapetom 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throw310822 16 hours ago [-]
I don't think you realise how ignorant and racist is this idea that an entire religion and country of 90 million doesn't behave like normal human beings.
raffraffraff 16 hours ago [-]
Have you lived in Iran? It's not a whole country of 90 million people who will shout "Push the button!". Most of them are unwillingly imprisoned under a regime lead by the religious zealots who will push that button, even if it means destruction of themselves and their population. Or at least, that's the assumption that the west must make, based their religious views and their past rhetoric.
throw310822 16 hours ago [-]
Which is their past rhetoric?
As for their religious views, hasn't their supreme leader declared multiple times that nuclear weapons are prohibited by their religion?
raffraffraff 14 hours ago [-]
So they're definitely not building nuclear weapons.
throw310822 10 hours ago [-]
By your same logic.
sfe22 15 hours ago [-]
It doesn’t take 90 million iranians to push a button.
hajile 10 hours ago [-]
Here in the US, our soldiers insert their nuclear keys and await instructions to turn them several times per day. If even just ONE of the hundreds of pairs of soldiers turns the key, then ALL the nukes get launched. 99.999999% of Americans have no say either.
The truth is that Iran doesn't want to take out the holy sites in Israel and if martyrdom were the real goal, then Iran would have started all-out war with Israel decades ago.
sfe22 1 hours ago [-]
I first thought the first part is a joke. Didn’t know that. You make a good point below too.
throw2235 16 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ta12653421 16 hours ago [-]
There was a very interesting "street walk video" by a somewhat-famous travelling-blogger, he visited Afghanistan, talked to a lot of people, created a lot of footage of their daily life, asking about the regime etc.
This video got blocked after publishing by a political action group / NGO, it came back online only after dozens of other YouTube channels reported that.
And yes - this video depicted life of people in a theocracy ;-)
LtWorf 14 hours ago [-]
You can cherry pick and show anything you want.
I can go to USA, interview a few crazies (and there's a lot of them) and then make a documentary.
youngtaff 13 hours ago [-]
Texas wants to put the Ten commandments on every classroom wall!
kennywinker 16 hours ago [-]
Isn't christianity the one that has martyrdom at its core? Jesus was martyred for our sins after all. Christians can’t really be trusted not to sacrifice themselves at the drop of a roman helmet.
Or not. Perhaps, we understand the nuances of that because we were raised in a christian culture, but don’t understand the nuances of martyrdom in islam because we weren’t raised in a muslim culture? I know that’s true for me, i assume that’s true for any non-muslim who claims stuff about the core of islam.
asadm 16 hours ago [-]
You are wrong. Muslims don't wake up trying to get martydom asap. Protecting life (own included) is top-most goal, so much that even harming your body (tattoos etc) is strictly prohibited.
kergonath 12 hours ago [-]
It’s bizarre to read that in a world where news have been dominated by American conservatives trying to bring us to the end times for years now. Bizarre, disturbing, and terrifying.
Alex-C137 16 hours ago [-]
This is an extremely insane take and should be deleted immediately. Disgusting
The first thing I would want to do after wearing Israeli shoes would be to find a way to flee immediately and disassociate myself from being complicit with the ongoing genocide (or to resist it if I were in such a position), Iran's hostility be damned.
In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite.
asadm 16 hours ago [-]
... so you preemptively attack every neighbor and commit genocide?
lostmsu 16 hours ago [-]
Was this bombing a genocide?
kennywinker 16 hours ago [-]
The word “and” can be used to delineate two linked ideas. Sometimes they’re closely linked ideas like bombing someone AND accusing them of being two weeks away from nukes for decades. Sometimes they’re less closely linked ideas, like bombing someone AND committing genocide against someone else.
Krasnol 14 hours ago [-]
You make it sound like it's some natural law that they have to destroy the state of Israel. I mean, did you even think about this when you heard it for the first time? Do you think your common Iranian citizen wake up in the morning and feels the natural urge to destroy Israel? What is this?
Be serious.
This is no justification to ignore international law. But that's dead now. Nobody will ever care again until we're done with the next big war or something. Bomb away...
simonh 12 hours ago [-]
I don't think the average Iranian citizen cares at all about Israel, one way or the other, but they don't have any say in Iranian state politics.
There's no natural law setting the mullahs against the existence of Israel, as I said they think and vocally declaim publicly that it is divine law. Don't believe me, just look up what they say.
I do think the way this is being handled is a travesty though. There was a functioning agreement with international monitoring in place in 2016 and Trump tore it up. Since then Iran has increased their enrichment capacity, and their stockpile of enriched material by 22 time above what they committed to in that agreement. Canceling that deal was a foolish blunder that had lead us to this.
Ultimately the only path to long term peace has to be the fall of theocratic rule in Iran, but that's a mater for the Iranian people. It's quite possible the nuclear question could have been managed, but just as with NAFTA Trump saw personal political advantage is scrapping an old deal in order to rebrand it as his better deal, but dropped the ball because he doesn't understand the geopolitics, and here we are.
Krasnol 9 hours ago [-]
I think it's important, especially so shortly after the fact not to mix up things.
Trump wanted another deal and told Bibi not to attack. Bibi didn't want that and attacked. Trump jumped on the bandwagon and now everybody is talking about him again.
simonh 4 hours ago [-]
All absolutely true. In fact we're only in this situation because Trump cancelled the nuclear deal with Iran, along with as many treaties as he could get away with so he could get the credit of renegotiating them. Except for the ones he never got round to, like the one with Iran. So, here we are.
I don't particularly blame the Israelis though, and there's broad support for this over there, it's not just Netanyahu.
throw310822 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jdietrich 15 hours ago [-]
The dehumanising thing is to steadfastly believe that deep down everyone holds secular liberal values, regardless of their words and actions.
Secular discussion about conflict in the Middle East frequently discounts the possibility that self-professed religious fundamentalists are in fact religious fundamentalists. A lot of Israeli settlers really do believe that they are fulfilling a sacred duty. A lot of Palestinians really do believe that becoming a martyr for al-Aqsa guarantees them an eternity in paradise. A lot of American Evangelicals really do believe that conflict in the Middle East will bring about the day of judgement.
I might believe that we live in a godless and meaningless universe in which death is final, but that puts me in a very small minority. Most people -throughout history and across the world - frequently act in ways that are totally irrational from a secular perspective, but are perfectly logical within a framework of faith.
9dev 16 hours ago [-]
You’d need to make a distinction between the Iranian regime, a corrupt band of thieves in charge of the government, infused by religion, and the Iranian people, who have been suffering through this for almost half a century. Any criticism is directed against the former, and fully valid: These people are fanatical idiots, albeit dangerous.
sreekanth850 16 hours ago [-]
That is why they formed the Axis of Resistance. They will act through their proxies. And imagine if Hezbollah or the Houthis got nuclear weapons, the whole world would be threatened.
throw310822 15 hours ago [-]
> the whole world would be threatened.
Why? What do Hezbollah or the Houthis care about the world? They fight Israel, which is a genocidal regime.
This even ignoring the ludicrous idea that if they got a nuclear weapon they could deliver it anywhere.
sreekanth850 9 hours ago [-]
Why do Al-quaeda organzied september 11 attacks? I can give countless example to show that they doesnt need a reason to attack. Its just religion that matters and their goal of global islamisation.
Recently in pahalgam they killed 26 civllians by asking their religion and verifying it by asking them to pray.
You said israel regime as genocidal? What was the cause of all this issues? How many was killed in october attacks in israel?
Why did they held hostages from different countries?
So, yes i strongly believe that those terrorist doesnt need a reason to attack. Their goal is global islamisation.
Khamenei had openly said that their number 1 enemy is America.
dotancohen 16 hours ago [-]
> To suggest Iran would do it anyway is equivalent to saying that they're completely, crazy, fanatical, genocidal and stupid
It's the Iranian government saying they'd do it, not westerners. And you seem to have some sort of culture complex. Their culture is different than yours (not better, not worse, but different) and for them dying to liberate land from infidels is not crazy, it is the highest honour their society bestows.
There is nothing racist or dehumanising about acknowledging cultures different from your own. In fact, I would say that assuming everybody adheres to your cultural values is the racist position.
dartharva 14 hours ago [-]
To suggest Iran would do it anyway would actually just be taking Iranian leadership at their word.
JodieBenitez 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throw310822 16 hours ago [-]
They might be fanatical, but to the point of desiring the destruction of themselves, their loved ones, their country, their culture, their literature, their history.. just to inflict genocide on others? This is a dehumanising thought.
Besides, the fanatical leader of that country has said in clear terms that they consider nuclear weapons forbidden by their religion. They have also said in clear terms that oppose the "Israeli regime" and the existence of Israel as a political entity- that's what they mean by "destruction of Israel", not nuking it.
nine_k 15 hours ago [-]
In 1930s and early 1940s, emperor Hirohito of Japan approved of a number of terrible things done by the Japanese imperial armed forces to people of China and Korea, and warred bitterly with the US. But once he realized that he's losing the war, and Japan can be just destroyed by nuclear bombs, he decided to surrender, in order to avoid the complete destruction of his country and senseless deaths of Japanese people. (This is somehow documented.) He cared about the Japanese and Japan more than he cared about his majesty, or honor, or abstract ideas; he agreed to abdicate of all his powers.
Sadly, I highly doubt that the regime of the ayatollahs is going to act like that, instead of fighting fanatically to the bitter end and the last drop of Iranian blood if need be. (A bitter end is very far from the current situation though.)
Nathanba 16 hours ago [-]
yes I think so, if they believe that they are stopping another genocide then they'd conceivably be willing to risk their own genocide to help do what's right.
tda 16 hours ago [-]
Isn't Israel a defacto theocracy too?
nine_k 16 hours ago [-]
No, Israel is not using religious norms or holy scriptures as the law, and establishes no state religion. Iran's constitution directly says that the norms of the Sharia law are its foundation, and makes Shia Islam the state religion.
helge9210 16 hours ago [-]
"Jewish State" literally means religious norms and holy scriptures are considered a law. Rabbinical courts are part of the Israeli legal system, which operates religious courts in parallel to the civil court system.
nine_k 15 hours ago [-]
The rabbinical courts exist for sorting out religious issues, such as religious marriages and divorces of Jewish citizens. Judaism is not even special-cased: «Such courts exist for the recognized religious communities in Israel, including Muslim courts, Christian courts, and Jewish Rabbinical courts.» (Wikipedia).
The Basic Laws, which sort of comprise the makeshift constitution of Israel, don't seem to make any religious references, but rather refer to the founding UN principles like human rights.
helge9210 13 hours ago [-]
My apartment rental agreement had a clause all "all disagreements are to be resolved in rabbinical court". Reach of the religious courts is unlimited.
Even civil courts are allowed to refer to holy texts if the law is not clear.
nine_k 13 hours ago [-]
Wow, that's wild! :-/
throw310822 16 hours ago [-]
I would say the US is too at this point, given continued references to god by its leaders. A country where a senator can say he supports a certain foreign policy because it's written in the Bible?
JodieBenitez 16 hours ago [-]
No, it's not.
HaZeust 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throwaway20222 16 hours ago [-]
Can you explain your comment a bit more please?
farzd 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
recroad 16 hours ago [-]
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intermerda 16 hours ago [-]
> Why are you assuming that Iran wants to destroy Israel?
What are you pointing at there? Their position from 1979 which is 12 years after 1967?
Also, let’s leave rhetoric aside. What is the actual record of violence between Israel and anyone else? It’s not even close https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
Israel here is the aggressor. Not acknowledging that makes no sense and doesn’t leave grounds for any meaningful discussion.
untrust 14 hours ago [-]
From the wiki they linked:
In 2015, former Basij chief and senior RIGC officer, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, stated in an interview that the destruction of Israel is "nonnegotiable". In addition, according to the Times of Israel, Naqdi said that during the summer Gaza conflict with Israel, a significant portion of Hamas’s weaponry, training, and technical expertise was provided by Iran.[27][28] In 2019, Naqdi made a direct call for the destruction of Israel during a televised interview. Naqdi asserted that the Zionist regime must be "annihilated and destroyed," asserting "This will definitely happen." He declared his intention to one day raise the flag of the Islamic Revolution over Jerusalem.
recroad 10 hours ago [-]
The Zionist state as it is since 1967 has to be dismantled and it must go back to its 1967 borders. That’s international law.
Also, you seem to be putting a lot of weight from words 10 years ago by former officials when current Israeli officials including the head of state is clearly voicing support for genocide.
The otherising of brown Muslims comes easy.
nkmnz 14 hours ago [-]
Rhetoric aside. What was the actual record of violence when Hitler published „My Struggle“ in 1925, laying out his ideas of solving the „Jewish question“? Why should one believe the evil of it lays out its plans way in advance?
recroad 10 hours ago [-]
By 1925 the Beer Hall Putsch had already happened and Hitler was in jail for high treason.
nkmnz 5 hours ago [-]
By 2025 Iran had already been known to sponsor the acts of war the Houthis are performing against Israel.
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
> Why are you assuming that Iran wants to destroy Israel? Everything I’ve actually seen is the complete opposite: it’s Israel that clearly wants to destroy Israel.
Even by your own logic, do you believe that having a country threaten your existence is not reason enough to want them destroyed?
recroad 10 hours ago [-]
This whole “threaten your existence” is a clutch in your argument. It smells like “but Hamas…” and tries to create a precondition of condemnation of one side which also happens to be the victim.
recroad 16 hours ago [-]
destroy Iran I mean
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
If you pay attention to my question, you'll notice that it isn't conditional to who made threats to who. Do you believe this influences your answer?
AlecSchueler 15 hours ago [-]
> they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.
Do they? What is this based on? My understanding was that they were reacting to a pattern of imperialism of which Israel was the crown jewel. Is there actually something inherent about the Shi'ite religion which says Israel must fall?
loandbehold 15 hours ago [-]
Iran was one of the first countries in the Middle East to recognize Israel. But it all changed since Islamic Revolution. Their official position since than have been that Israel cannot exist. They don't even refer to it as Israel but as "Zionist Regime". It's their official public position and what they say on their (government controlled) TV. They've been fighting proxy war with Israel since 80s.
I'm not sure that answers my question. They could have a political belief that Israel must fall but you haven't shown a reason to believe it's based on their religious beliefs. Obviously the two things are tied up together but I don't believe that if a Jewish homeland state had been created in Western Europe or in Antarctica that Iran would have an issue with it. Their problem is surely that Israel represents an historical and continuing power play by Western forces, a springboard from which the US and it's allies can encourage coups, wage wars and dominate the trade of the natural resources in the region. It seems like a very practical concern more than a religious one.
loandbehold 15 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter for Israel weather it's based on religious belief or not. But Iran does frame their opposition in Islamic context in its communication to Iranian people. E.g. Khamenei says things like "fighting Israel to liberate Palestine is an obligation and an Islamic jihad."
https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-supreme-leader-israel-cancerous...
AlecSchueler 14 hours ago [-]
It might not matter for Israel but it matters for me as an Irishman watching the rest of the world getting sucked into a conflict.
Framing it as a religious opposition paints Iran as an irrational actor which can't be reasoned with, when it appears to me that it's behaving the way it's been pushed to behave by encroaching colonial forces.
I don't believe in Islam or in Judaism but I do believe in radical discourse and trying to understand the position of the other. Saying "it's their religion to be bloody violent and destructive, what can we do?" throws any space for understanding out of the window.
Ray20 14 hours ago [-]
>but you haven't shown a reason to believe it's based on their religious beliefs.
Their religious leaders like literally come out and say, "This is based on our religious beliefs."
AlecSchueler 13 hours ago [-]
Does every Shi'ite hold these same beliefs then? What is the religious basis for the belief?
Henry VIII used religious justification for breaking off from the pope as well but surely we're grown up enough to recognise those movements came about from a desire for political autonomy more than disagreements over bible interpretations?
>In 2024, Ali Khamenei told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "The divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea."
In particular check out the "clerics" section of that article for the statements of multiple leading religious authorities in the regime on the religious justifications.
AlecSchueler 6 hours ago [-]
Well, to start off I want to reiterate what I said about the reformation era political upheavals in Europe and religion being used as a justification and easy explanation for very real geopolitical concerns.
But just for argument's sake and to respect your position I always want to point out that your quote subtly talks about "the Zionist entity" and not about Israel or Jews. So I can assume that you're equating Israel with Zionism, which is arguably fair. Now the question I would have is do we recognise the inherent violence of Zionism and, if so, why do we decentre that in our conversation and instead focus on the reaction to it?
simonh 4 hours ago [-]
What geopolitical concerns can Iran have over Israel, that Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia wouldn't have? They're all functionally Israeli allies now.
It is important to understand how we got here, to understand what might be plausibly achievable.
In the 1920s after Britain kicked out Turkey there was a partition proposal. The Jewish leadership at the time agreed saying they would accept a land "the size of a tablecloth". The Palestinian leaders refused absolutely and demanded the expulsion of all Jews. Their leader declared "It is impossible to live alongside the Jews" and threatened "A river of blood".
In 1937 there was another proposal in which 'Israel' would have been the small region from Tel Aviv north to the Lebanese border. The Palestinians rejected it out of hand.
In 1948 the Palestinians were granted considerably more land than they have now for their own independent state, but refused partition as unacceptable. Five Arab nations attacked Israel with the intention to destroy it completely. The General Secretary of the Arab League at the time Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, who personally orchestrated the attack declared the intention of the war was "An extermination and a momentous massacre".
Jordan and Egypt annexed the West bank and Gaza for the next 2 decades during which the Palestinians had no political rights or freedoms. The Palestinian leaders never pushed for the formation of an independent state during this time, and Israel took both regions during the Six Day War.
So if we include the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have been offered an independent state of their own four times, and every time they have rejected it completely as unacceptable. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" literally means free of Jews. Over and over, the Palestinian leadership have made that crystal clear. An independent state of their own alongside Israel in any shape or form, in their own statements and openly declared intentions has persistently been rejected.
Meanwhile Egypt and Jordan have realised that Israel is no threat to them, in fact both states have suffered coup attempts by Palestinians. They are now functionally Israeli allies against the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has now pretty solidly moved in the same direction.
8note 2 hours ago [-]
egypt at least, is bribed by the US on that.
if you include the oslo accords, the narrative that palestinians are the one and only problem breaks down. the only time there was agreeable terms being set, and israelis assasinated their leader for proposing them.
i wouldnt expect america to ever be favourable to carving out a new independent state of Venesuela from colorado because theres a lot of non-citizen refugees. you can see americans today pushing back against having more immigrants, too and removing the people that are here
nec4b 11 hours ago [-]
Are you proposing moving Israel to another location?
AlecSchueler 6 hours ago [-]
No.
ngcazz 11 hours ago [-]
They were not inching towards nukes though, were they? And why is the threat calculus here their fault when the Israelis attacked Iran unprovoked? This top-voted comment is consent-manufacturing tripe.
mcv 11 hours ago [-]
Israel's attack wasn't entirely unprovoked; Iran frequently calls for attacks on Israel, wiping them from the face of the earth, and funding organizations that attack Israel. The fear that they might use nuclear weapons offensively against Israel is very real.
Note that I'm not a fan of Israel, condemn their genocide in Gaza, and consider Netanyahu a war criminal. I'm also not a fan of this attack on Iran and prefer a peaceful and democratic overthrow of that regime. But calling the attack unprovoked is not entirely correct; Iran spends a lot of time provoking Israel.
ngcazz 10 hours ago [-]
If you are familiar with how Israel came to be founded, and how Iran became an Islamic republic, you'll see how that is a naive narrative.
For one, Balfour's illegal concession of Palestine to the Israelis had the clear strategic purpose of keeping pan-Arabism at bay. The ensuing establishment of Israel - by the UNSCOP, in contravention of international law - had the side effect of turbocharging settler colonialist violence (1948 and ongoing) and expansionism (e.g. 1967 annexations).
That was the background to the 1953 CIA coup, and the eventual Islamic revolution in 1979. Sure, it's not the liberal democratic outcome Iranians would've liked, but it reclaimed sovereignty lost, and they are aware of the historic role of Israel and their strategic and moral position in relation to it, regardless of their regime.
Bottom line, if we look closely at who really is threatening whom, the reactions of the Iranians are probably quite understandable
mcv 8 hours ago [-]
As far as I'm aware, the background of the 1953 coup was oil. The democratic government of Iran want to nationalize the oil industry, and western oil companies did like that. On top of that, Iran was willing to do business with the USSR. That's why US and UK secret services conspired with the ayatollahs to overthrow the democratic government and replace it with the shah.
No shit the result of 1979 is not what the Iranians wanted; there have been frequent democratic uprisings since then. Most Iranians didn't really care one way or the other about Israel, although you can't really blame them for not liking the US. And Israel has never really had an issue with Iran. But it's the ayatollahs who have been extremely hostile towards Israel, and have spent decades funding Hezbollah attacks against Israel.
I'm not going to defend Israel; they've committed plenty of crimes. And war crimes. But almost entirely against the Palestinians, not against Iran.
The Middle East is complex, and there's no simply good vs evil there, but the ayatollahs are definitely not on the side of good.
13 hours ago [-]
mathgradthrow 8 hours ago [-]
they were sprinting covertly. Thats why this happened.
seydor 17 hours ago [-]
> by having a theocracy they
Religion is just another ideology, and it s not like Islam has a specific position about nuclear energy
hajile 9 hours ago [-]
Iran's current situation is because their dictator DOES have a position about nuclear energy and nukes.
Energy is fine, but nukes are haram. This is THE reason they haven't built any nukes the last 40+ years.
Changing a religious decree of that nature requires a very big excuse which has never existed. Israel and the US threatening Iran's existence and threatening to kill millions of Muslims is the ONE thing I can think of that would allow Khamenei an "out" to actually build a nuke.
ebb_earl_co 16 hours ago [-]
In my view, religion is the set of ideologies that plays the children’s game of one-upping each other’s numbers until one of the children says “infinity” and sticks fingers in ears, sayin the game is over.
By this I mean the religious ideological move is eternal punishment for what they deem unsatisfactory or eternal bliss for compliance, no other branch.
Other ideologies invoke similar (infinite growth in capitalism, e.g.) but those are hyperbole for proselytization. An ideology that attempts to persuade with either the most egregious stick possible or the most delicious carrot possible makes religion the least palatable of ideologies.
littlestymaar 15 hours ago [-]
> What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all.
You're misunderstanding their position and that's why it seems idiotic to you: they stopped working on building nukes back in 2003, after that date all they did was using the ability to get nukes as a negotiation leverage, that's how they got JPCoA in 2015 and since the US unilaterally left it in 2018 and the rest of the Western world failed to keep it working (that would have required courage to anger the US), Iran was seeking to force a new deal by raising the bar a bit: they announced back in 2022 that they'd enrich up to 60% in order to increase their negotiation leverage, but they didn't go past that stage nor did they work on the militarization tech in the meantime, because they weren't aiming to get the bomb at all.
dandanua 15 hours ago [-]
"In God we trust"
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
A cheap shot ignorant of the history and context of that phrase.
belter 12 hours ago [-]
> What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
Today strike on Iran nuclear sites endangers millions of American and Israeli lives. It teaches Tehran the same lesson North Korea learned long ago. That only a nuclear deterrent secures a regime survival. To believe Iran will absorb this blow without striking back is not merely naive, it is dangerously delusional.
It is also clear any Iranian nuclear critical assets were moved to alternative secret sites long before the strikes, as satellite photos show: "Satellite images show activity at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility before U.S. air strikes" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/22/satellite-images-show-activi...
1oooqooq 12 hours ago [-]
or, you know, they just want power generators, like they claimed for decades now and all the UN auditors confirmed every time?
recroad 16 hours ago [-]
Thank you, great liberator. Please bomb us more to save our lives.
Gareth321 10 hours ago [-]
It seems fairly clear that Israel is targeting military sites and not civilians. On this basis alone would should feel hopeful for the 90 million innocent people who long for freedom from their oppressors. Your comment seems to imply that Israel is attacking civilians, and that those civilians are aligned with the theocratic dictators. On both points, you would be entirely incorrect.
recroad 10 hours ago [-]
Are you seriously suggesting that Israel doesn’t target civilians? Are you following the events of the last 2 years?
Gareth321 9 hours ago [-]
Re-read my comment please because it appears you did not.
recroad 6 hours ago [-]
I think maybe you shouldn't see Muslims as a homogenous block of people with the same taste by saying stuff like "90 million" as if you know what they want.
Your premise of Israel not targeting civilians is not serious. Just turn a TV channel on that isn't US mainstream media (which is actively manipulating to you).
hackerknew 16 hours ago [-]
You’d be surprised, but the people of Iran have been waiting for this moment for years. There are 80 million people who want the end of the regime.
Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.
mullingitover 14 hours ago [-]
Oh! I remember this one. The next part goes, “They’re going to greet us as liberators and give our troops flowers.”
And then twenty years from now everyone will say they were always against it.
Kye 12 hours ago [-]
It was true in some cases, but it was more "thank you, now please leave." Almost a direct quote from one report from an embedded reporter I'd cite directly if it weren't near impossible to find things online from that far back.
spacecadet 14 hours ago [-]
The problem is the timeline... MIC takes over and it becomes about building, selling, and dropping bombs instead of rebuilding and GTFO.
During Iraq the US military deployed some insanely creative strategies with the deployment of concrete- yet nothing meaningful was actually built for the people of Iraq...
recroad 16 hours ago [-]
You hear and read about it, but it’s still surreal to see the effects of propaganda in real life. I’m glad I’m old enough to have seen this show before live.
gattilorenz 16 hours ago [-]
Even those who want a regime change tend to dislike getting bombs on their heads.
And if anything, the last 20 years taught us that revolutions imposed from the outside never work
hackerknew 7 hours ago [-]
Not on their heads. On the weapons and heads of the regime. The regime is not the Iranian people.
InsideOutSanta 13 hours ago [-]
Nothing is more effective at unifying a country than being attacked by a foreign power. This is how Bush secured a second term and how Giuliani became America's Mayor, two individuals who were previously disrespected and/or hated by a majority of their constituents.
jokowueu 14 hours ago [-]
Iraq flash backs , they were sure very happy to greet their liberators , it's amazing to see propaganda's effects working in action
dimator 16 hours ago [-]
how does this do anything except strengthen the resolve of those thugs in power? even those against the regime will want retribution for an attack on their home land.
regime change has never worked, not with actual boots on the ground, let alone targeted air strikes.
dlahoda 14 hours ago [-]
yugoslavia?
xoac 13 hours ago [-]
The bombing campaign united the people against the new enemy: “the west”, and arguably gave Milosevic some more time to rule. I survived this, trust me that even if your regime is shit, people don’t want to be bombed and will unite against the aggressor. This is in part because even if the aggressor claims that they are “bombing the regime” they are usually in fact bombing the country’s infrastructure, industry, urban areas etc.
throwaway447573 16 hours ago [-]
I don't see Hitler and Mussolini's grandsons ruling Germany and Italy.
icepush 14 hours ago [-]
Believe it or not, Mussolini's granddaughter is a fairly influential former politician within Italy
portaouflop 14 hours ago [-]
Anecdotally Mussolini’s granddaughter has been a member of both houses of the Italian Parliament as well as the European Parliament.
UncleMeat 10 hours ago [-]
Germany was split in half for 45 years. The Marshall Plan was the largest economic development operation in history. Meanwhile, the GOP has decided that the entire concept of foreign economic aid is bad because a theater somewhere was too woke.
Regime change and nation building worked so well in Afghanistan and Iraq. Onward to more death and suffering, I guess.
nomat 15 hours ago [-]
how much did it cost to rebuild germany? and how many trillions did we flush down the drain attempting to put together a functioning government in iraq and afghanistan?
where is DOGE when you actually need them?
spacecadet 14 hours ago [-]
Are they not there DOGE-ing as we speak?! lol.
fifilura 13 hours ago [-]
I believe you that the regime is hated.
But can you define what "this moment" is that they have been waiting for?
I don't think "this moment" helps them along the way. It is rather a reason for more internal repression.
hackerknew 7 hours ago [-]
The moment is that the regime is severely weakened and is struggling to deal with an external war, with very few weapons left. Many heads of their military were eliminated and they are scrambling to put the pieces back together.
Couple that with a population of at least 80 million people who hate the regime and only didn’t fight back because the regime had physical power over them.
Do you know those people in the article and if they are Iranian?
adastra22 15 hours ago [-]
Literally every Iranian I know, which is quite a few. The regime is NOT liked.
vasco 14 hours ago [-]
Waiting for this (to be bombed out if existence) and "don't like the regime" are very different things.
throwaway97894 13 hours ago [-]
Indeed, judging by the No King protests, some strong action is in order if we follow this pathetic way of thinking.
hajile 10 hours ago [-]
This is the big problem. Most of the people who would want a different government enough to take action took the only action they could and left the country.
This also accounts for the bias in people you meet as the ones who like Iran tend to continue living there.
14 hours ago [-]
dreghgh 11 hours ago [-]
I live in a major world city with considerable immigrant populations from many parts of the world, and saw some of the pro-Palestine demonstrations yesterday.
There were numerous groups of Iranians protesting against Israel's actions and in support of the Palestinians. These are Iranians living abroad so can be expected statistically to be less supportive of the current government than the average Iranian resident.
The counter-protest, mainly of pro-Israel demonstrators, this time also had Iranians, demonstrating against the current regime (and broadly in support of Israel). All the Iranian flags in this very small group were the Shah-era design with the lion.
The visibly Iranian groups in the pro-Palestinian demo vastly outnumbered the counter protest. They seemed quite ideologically diverse. There were some people holding pictures of the ayatollah with the words 'No Surrender'. But there were also groups with the sign "don't bomb us and claim it's for women's rights" (can't remember exact wording). Groups including women with headscarves, other groups with only bare headed women. As well as the current official flag with the swords, I saw people holding the lion flag, and others with the neutral tricolour without emblem. So at least some of the people present were anti the current regime, but supported the Palestinians in the current conflict.
Obviously a very selective sampling for many reasons, but far from what you might expect if almost all Iranians were united against their current government.
hackerknew 7 hours ago [-]
People living outside Iran participating in these protests have no idea what they are doing.
On the reddit NewIran sub, they were mocking a picture of somebody at one of those rally’s holding a giant IRGC flag… upside-down.
I wouldn’t use numbers of “useful idiots” showing up at rallies as a way of demonstrating internal support for the Iranian regime.
Surveys suggest around 70-80% are anti-regime, which makes sense considering the regime’s history of hangings and imprisonment for minor offenses. The people of Iran want the regime to end.
stuckkeys 13 hours ago [-]
There is some truth to that, but if it was that important for them to overthrow the regime…why not do it internally but instead they wait for someone to bomb them? 80mill is not a small number. You are saying 87% asked for this lol.
tsimionescu 16 hours ago [-]
Imagine a terrorist attack against the Trump admin in the following weeks, and someone coming in to say "you'd be surprised, but the people of the USA have been waiting for this moment for months. There are 100 million people who want an end to Trump".
People never, ever, under any circumstances, want to be attacked and bombed by another country. Not even the biggest dissidents rotting in regime jails would welcome this. Not even a little bit.
simgt 15 hours ago [-]
Even most children or partners of abusive people feel defensive when an outsider intervenes. Nevermind getting your country bombed by strangers. Spending days reading news that hide people behind symbols make some forget that we're dealing with human relationship.
hackerknew 6 hours ago [-]
You write this because you don’t understand what people in Iran have been dealing with for the past 45 years.
It is one thing to not like the political leadership, but another thing if the government oppresses the population.
Those of us in America are privileged that we can’t fathom what that means.
tsimionescu 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not an American, and live in country that was under an even more authoritarian regime until fairly recently. While I was born just as the regime was ending, I know plenty from my parents about how they felt. And I stand by what I said: even under the worse circumstances, no one ever desires to be bombarded.
Ray20 14 hours ago [-]
>People never, ever, under any circumstances, want to be attacked and bombed by another country.
Depends on the effectiveness of the bombing.
fastball 15 hours ago [-]
If the attack was specifically targeting the US to encourage the downfall of Trump, I am sure there are millions of Americans that would be celebrating. Spend some time on Bluesky – they'd love it over there if the attacks didn't literally hit them. They can't seem to see much further than that.
autobodie 14 hours ago [-]
Such bombs would necessarily need to fall in American cities, so the scenario you describe is not possible.
fastball 14 hours ago [-]
Which part is impossible?
vFunct 12 hours ago [-]
Please don't promote war. Ain't no one going to overthrow the Iranian government now that we attacked them. The US and Israel just screwed up everything there. Thanks.
bobxmax 12 hours ago [-]
That's nonsense. This is what westerners like to tell themselves because all they read is western media coverage of Iran.
No, 80 million people don't want to end the regime. Westerners can't fathom the fact that not everyone wants to live in a democratic free-for-all.... so clearly anyone who doesn't deserves bombing.
Pathetic. Imperialism is encoded in the DNA of Americans at this point.
breppp 11 hours ago [-]
It's a bit more complex than that, you have a country with two decades of mass demonstrations that were brutally suppressed and a new generation that no longer sees itself as religious while living in a theocracy.
they do have a massive popular support issue over there
bobxmax 5 hours ago [-]
None of what you said is true. They still enjoy large amounts of popularity - are you forgetting the entire country virtually coming to demonstrate when we slaughtered their commander a few years ago?
breppp 5 hours ago [-]
Not sure, how "nothing of what i said is true"
I didn't say there are no supporters, but there is an asymmetry between supporters and protestors.
Supporters are being brought by buses, are often members of the Basij or other government functions and generally have incentives to do so.
Protestors however risk extremely painful death and torture.
There is support for the regime, usually outside of large cities, but there's a reason there were large protests in almost every single year since 2016
There's over 40% of responders that do not claim their religion is Shia, but rather Atheist, Humanist, etc. That's more than the people that define themselves as Shia, in a Shia theocracy. This also correlates with skepticism of government media and rejection of Hijab
Hikikomori 14 hours ago [-]
US didn't like it the last time the Iranian people got their regime change.
anticodon 11 hours ago [-]
> Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.
Oh, enough to look at Libya, Syria, Iraq, to see what happens next:
1. Lots of infrastructure would be destroyed. It's the first thing NATO does in any invasion: bomb powerplants, water treatment plants, airports, hospitals, business centers (remember, that Iraq invasion started with destroying Baghdad business center, it was shown in all Western media). Infrastructure is super-expensive to rebuild, many countries in the world have no resources to build decent infrastructure.
2. At least several millions of Iranians would die. It's obvious. Somebody's moms and dads, somebody's children. The bombs do not choose. And we all know that West is indifferent to the deaths of non-Western non-white population (remember, e.g. killings and war crimes in Afghanistan).
3. In the end the country will end up in half-feudal anarchistic ruins (like Libya) or with "democratic" puppet government. Any outcome will allow selling Iran oil and gas to the West for the price of water, further lowering living standards of Iran.
I fail to see a single benefit for anyone living in Iran.
chgs 14 hours ago [-]
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pjpyao 16 hours ago [-]
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k4rli 13 hours ago [-]
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deepsun 16 hours ago [-]
I know a similar precedent from Belarus, an Eastern European country. The population is way smaller, and their main problem is Moscow in the east, but it's the same sentiment -- please bomb us as we cannot throw out this regime ourselves, yes.
Internet used to joke about US "freedom bombs", but it's taken quite seriously and positively there.
brabel 15 hours ago [-]
My wife is from Belarus and I have been there many times. What you say in so ridiculous it’s hard to even respond with a serious answer. Just want to point out that they suffered the most under Nazis and would do anything to prevent being in another war.
tazjin 15 hours ago [-]
US-aligned IT specialists are uniquely propagandized (they're one of the main targets of Western propaganda for good reason - they have outsized influence!), so don't expect many reality-compatible takes on this website.
FpUser 13 hours ago [-]
I personally friends with many IT people and their families from Belarus (the company I used to work for brought whole bunch to Canada). Not a single one wants their country freedom bombed.
spacecadet 14 hours ago [-]
Tech is MIC.
hashstring 14 hours ago [-]
Thank you for putting it so clearly and bluntly.
People lack common sense, but not their appetite to ingurgitate the daily three meals that the propaganda machines prepared for them.
10 hours ago [-]
10 hours ago [-]
jonyt 10 hours ago [-]
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diggan 10 hours ago [-]
> Dictators are not the good the good guys, for their people or their neighbors.
Trying to find a clear line of "good vs evil guys" is bound to led you down a bad path. Is how Iran treat people very shitty and outright evil? Yes. Does that mean other countries should feel OK with invading them to "liberate" them? Probably no and feels like a very dangerous line of thinking that could be used to invade basically any country, including the US itself.
I don't think many people are arguing that Iran is some beacon of democracy and treating their people right, but regardless of that, we tend to favor sovereignty of nations for a good reason, yet it seems like some countries still struggle with accepting this.
jonyt 8 hours ago [-]
Iran isn't being attacked because it's not nice to its own people (which is a shame really, all dictators and theocrats should worry for their lives). It's being attacked because it has ballistic missiles, a nuclear weapons program, a giant sign in the middle of Tehran counting down the existence of Israel and its leaders have repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. So weapon, opportunity and motive.
It's of course free to work towards the destruction of Israel but then it's hardly fair to complain that Israel may try to preempt that.
diggan 7 hours ago [-]
> It's being attacked because it has ballistic missiles, a nuclear weapons program, a giant sign in the middle of Tehran counting down the existence of Israel and its leaders have repeatedly called for Israel's destruction
Switch "Israel" with "Iran" and you have basically the same thing, but seemingly waging war against Israel would never be an option, would it? Because we accept the country's own sovereignty, as we should do with all countries.
1024core 6 hours ago [-]
US is getting sucked into a 1300-year old Shia-Sunni conflict.
Personally, I don't understand why Iran had to meddle in Palestine. When Palestine's own neighbors don't give a rat's ass for the suffering of the Palestinians, who are these mullahs sitting 1000 mi away to get involved?
After the first Gulf War itself, Iranian rulers should have seen the light and
stayed tf out of the US's way (and Israel might just be the 51st state, practically speaking). Just work on improving your economy, educating your kids, building up your infrastructure and turn Iran into one of the world's top economies.
But noooo...... those idiots had to get involved in Palestine: supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.... WHY? Just why?!?
swesour 6 hours ago [-]
Because they don't want Jews to have their own state.
ngruhn 5 hours ago [-]
They just want to annihilate the non-believers. If the Jews wouldn't have priority, they would probably bully the majority Sunni Palestinians themselves.
> Just work on improving your economy, educating your kids, building up your infrastructure
Who cares about all this secular nonsense. Killing Jews, that's what god wants you to do. Doesn't matter if you sacrifice a 100x your own muslim brothers in the process. They die as martyrs. That's an express ticket to paradise.
I think this makes a theocratic regime even more dangerous than a (more or less) secular autocrat like MBS. These guys ultimately want something that's not in this world. How can make a deal with that?
nsingh2 2 hours ago [-]
The religious absolutism you criticize is present in Israel's current leadership. Smotrich and Ben Gvir call Gaza reconquest and West Bank annexation a religious duty, claim that it's a redemption. Justifying tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths and a war bill funded mostly by the US [1].
There is also hatred within the Israeli population against Arabs and Iranians in the region, and still that's no reason to justify continued aggression.
I'm seeing these no-nuance, dehumanizing, views everywhere on this thread, though I'm not sure why I expected better. Maybe because this "Iran big bad" rhetoric closely mirrors what happened during the Iraq war, and only helps justify further escalation.
Because they turned Israel into their Boogeyman the same way the US tries to turn countries like China into theirs or Russia treating Ukraine as their Boogeyman. North Korea treating the US as one.
Countries run by dictators need an external enemy to paint as the cause for problems.
jameslk 16 hours ago [-]
This is not the end. This is the beginning of another Iraq war, set up exactly the same way: claiming, with dubious proof, an imminent risk from weapons of mass destruction.
Iran’s options here are to bomb US bases, which are a lot closer by, mine the Strait of Hormuz, blow up oil infrastructure in nearby countries who are harboring US bases.
This might risk Iran a much larger war but the alternative of doing nothing and showing the world they won’t defend themselves is worse.
The US will again bankroll another big, more expensive war to the tune of trillions more in debt. Another decade of war ahead with no end in sight.
Meanwhile, new enemies will be made for the US as a young generation grows up living through this. The cycle repeats.
czhu12 15 hours ago [-]
I could be wrong in the end, but my read is that there really isn't the appetite anywhere near the levels during post 9/11 or cold war to enter a war. Not in the US, and likely not in Iran either.
Its hard to think of a full scale war that was started by the U.S. that didn't have popular approval at the time it was launched.
alkonaut 14 hours ago [-]
The lack of appetite in the US didn’t stop this. And the lack of appetite among normal Iranians won’t matter much.
War is better for regime survival than peace. This is a country ruled by a very scared elite that isn’t held accountable for anything and whose only means of survival is creating continuous distractions from domestic failures. And it’s similar in Iran.
abcd_f 13 hours ago [-]
> And it’s similar in Iran.
Nice.
alkonaut 12 hours ago [-]
Thanks. Autocrat jokes basically writing themselves at this point.
gpt5 14 hours ago [-]
The Iranian regime has gone through serious military blows in the past and survived. Their best course of action is de-escalation and regaining domestic control.
alkonaut 14 hours ago [-]
Yes I was primarily thinking about regime survival in Washington, not Teheran.
czottmann 14 hours ago [-]
I wish I could upvote this more than once. Well said.
ReptileMan 14 hours ago [-]
>War is better for regime survival than peace.
Not when your adversary has air superiority and they can just kill at will the leaders and elite and not the schmucks. Israel's tactics is to kill important people and links.
alkonaut 14 hours ago [-]
Iran doesn’t have air superiority (you probably misread which countries’ regime I meant…)
ReptileMan 13 hours ago [-]
Probably. Since of the three involved only Iran has a regime. The other two have democratically elected governments.
tsimionescu 13 hours ago [-]
A democratically elected government that then flaunts the law and the constitution, such as illegally attacking another country without congressional approval, is a regime. Particularly when it has historically low approval ratings.
ReptileMan 13 hours ago [-]
>But Trump is still running ahead of his approval rating at this point in his first term. And at this point in his second term, he’s actually running slightly ahead of Obama and Bush at this point in their second terms.
From Rey Teixeira.
So obviously not historically low.
zelphirkalt 12 hours ago [-]
Israel's government is probably only in power as long as they continue to start and wage war against countries in the neighborhood. It was very convenient for them, that the attack of October 7th happened, just when ten thousands of people went on the streets to protest against their attempt to take away power from the judges and elevate themselves.
In the US the election might have been tempered with, according to newest reports, so the government might not even be actually democratically elected and Trump is playing the autocrat's playbook, going as far as arresting political opponents without a warrant.
Iran no question there.
That makes 3 out of 3 in my book.
I am not so sure your statement is footed on a solid base these days.
samrus 10 hours ago [-]
lets not go crazy here. israel didnt conduct those attacks as a false flag to dodge the regime change
zelphirkalt 9 hours ago [-]
Lets not jump to conclusions here, about what I meant. There are other possibilities, that you are not considering.
owebmaster 10 hours ago [-]
all my allies are heroes and my enemies degenerates
zelphirkalt 13 hours ago [-]
I think you need to take a look at Gaza and revise a little about Israeli tactics.
youngtaff 13 hours ago [-]
Iran will just employ asymmetrical means of defense and it will go on for years
Israel’s decades long subjugation of the Palestinian people hasn’t brought them closer to peace
karmakurtisaani 13 hours ago [-]
> Israel’s decades long subjugation of the Palestinian people hasn’t brought them closer to peace
Recent events have convinced me the goal is not peace, but extermination.
zelphirkalt 12 hours ago [-]
That will be hard to do with a whole Iraq in between. I don't think Israel's military has what it takes. They already struggled in Gaza and are on the lifeline of US support. US could probably not even do it with massive amount of effort, and it would turn into a second Vietnam for them. Without troops on the ground no chance anyway.
karmakurtisaani 12 hours ago [-]
Sorry if unclear, I was talking about Palestinians.
samrus 10 hours ago [-]
how long did it take to kill bin laden, the most wanted man on the planet? and what happened to afghanistan more than a decade after he was actually killed
this isnt software bro. its probabilistic and has high variance. even then the expected value is vietnam
ReptileMan 10 hours ago [-]
Bin Laden was never part of any state's elite
lonelyasacloud 13 hours ago [-]
> Its hard to think of a full scale war that was started by the U.S. that didn't have popular approval at the time it was launched.
There's not been a President like the current incumbent.
samrus 10 hours ago [-]
that read would have predicted the US not bombing not bombing iran, and yet here we are. the current administration doesnt care what people want. trumps own base is against and they'll still do it. the "nothing ever happens" bet is not looking likely. with the calculus trump and netenyahu have shown, this looks like its heading towards US boots in iran
AnimalMuppet 2 hours ago [-]
We're just one Iran-backed terrorist attack that causes mass casualties away from popular support for a war against Iran.
UmGuys 13 hours ago [-]
Trump only wants to get richer. He'll do as many wars as he can get away with. Laws don't matter anymore. He just struck Iran because he felt like it and announced it on his social media network. This is beyond Idoicracy.
powerapple 13 hours ago [-]
You think the not-Trump president would do something different? Not an American, but I have assumed the outcome would be the same.
UmGuys 11 hours ago [-]
Yes. Trump shredded the deal we had in place an decided on his own to strike without congress. No one else would have done this.
>...decided on his own to strike without congress.
The US defense establishment has been looking to attack Iran for decades. "Decided on his own", seems inaccurate in this regard. The outrage over unauthorized uses of military force is largely performative partisan outrage. Although I would personally regard it as unconstitutional, it is the established norm for US Presidents to order airstrikes. There are very few politicians who have been consistent in their opposition to this.
UmGuys 7 hours ago [-]
Sure. Make a technical analysis of a casual comment. Of course he has support from others. At the very least defense contractors who profit from this. My comment was from his perspective. He only cares to get richer.
There's always been an authorization for military force even if it's a blanket one and they claim they're fighting ISIS, at least there has been deniability. Here there's no authorization, it's unconstitutional. I don't care about partisan politics. Most politicians are scummy.
lif 4 hours ago [-]
the protests in 2003 were massive
medlazik 14 hours ago [-]
Missiles don't sell themselves
wat10000 10 hours ago [-]
It’s hard to think of another president with a huge number of such dedicated followers, who actively hates the mass of Americans who don’t support him, and with a Congress so unwilling to exercise its power.
Let’s say Trump decides to order an invasion. What would happen then? Mass protests? Surely. Impeachment? No way. Military decides enough is enough and removes him? Definitely not. He realizes how unpopular this move is and backs down? Lol. Lmao.
markus_zhang 13 hours ago [-]
My hunch is Iran will bomb a US base, not causing any real damage, as a tough gesture and continue striking Israel.
navane 13 hours ago [-]
What I'm missing is that as one by one middle eastern countries are stomped to the curb, finding a balance between the countries gets harder. The more functional countries there are, the more room for negotiation, realignment, factions, and thus stability. We should want a muddy mess of interlinked allies. If after Egypt, Lybia, Syria, Iraq now Iran gets stomped, it's easier for the remaining powers to swing hard left out right instead of to continue muddying forward.
Narretz 13 hours ago [-]
That's a big leap. Nothing suggests a ground operation or occupation, which was the most costly part of the Iraq war, and importantly, was part of it from the beginning. Experience suggests that Trump would rather walk away from Iran after an exchange of strikes and claim victory then double down in a land war.
zelphirkalt 13 hours ago [-]
Which experience is that?
Narretz 11 hours ago [-]
Trump's handling of military strikes/operations, which have been mostly symbolic. Killing Soleimani, and not retaliating to the retaliationary strikes. A completely useless strike on Shayrat airbase in Syria. Pulling out of Yemen strikes this year because it was ineffective (never admitting to this though). Trump wants to be known as a deal maker. I don't think that has changed, he's just become more delusional regarding the practicality.
huhtenberg 14 hours ago [-]
Change of the Iran regime would help lessening the risk of a prolonged war.
From what can be glanced from the news seeping through it seems that the population has been largely ready for it for a while now.
UmGuys 13 hours ago [-]
What is this commentary? We literally just attacked them. We punched them in the face. We're doing the war. Not them.
huhtenberg 13 hours ago [-]
You must be trolling. In case you are not - the US attacked their nuclear research facilities. This is as far removed from attacking "them", as Iranian people, as it gets.
karmakurtisaani 13 hours ago [-]
So if China strategically bombed some US weapons research facilities, that would be just fine and normal?
UncleMeat 8 hours ago [-]
If Al Qaeda had just managed to fly planes into the Pentagon, would we somehow have decided "oh that's not really an attack on us?"
zabzonk 13 hours ago [-]
Because of course no Iranian people work at those bombed sites.
UmGuys 11 hours ago [-]
??? WTF are you on. If Iran bombs US research facilities it's okay? I don't understand at all.
logicchains 13 hours ago [-]
You're the one who must be trolling. If China bombed American nuclear research facilities, I can't imagine many Americans would agree it's "not an attack on the American people".
UncleMeat 8 hours ago [-]
We changed the regime in both Afghanistan and Iraq. That worked great at preventing a prolonged war.
This "oh the Iranians actually want to be bombed" stuff is absolutely nonsense.
throwawaynagain 13 hours ago [-]
I think you meant to say:
Change of the US regime would help lessening the risk of a prolonged war.
From what can be glanced from the news seeping through it seems that the population has been largely ready for it for a while now.
Dubious proof?! Iran has been blatantly pursuing nuclear weapons for decades - and the west (along with much of the rest of the world and the middle east) has been working to counter it the whole time.
Remember that in the middle east, Iran is considered a dire enemy.
gghhzzgghhzz 15 hours ago [-]
If it wanted nuclear weapons, it would just buy some from Pakistan.
Their actions do not follow the conclusion you state.
What is clear now though to any Iranian is that they should get nuclear weapons asap.
Diplomacy is just a tool used by the west to string you along while they get ready to bomb you
rocqua 15 hours ago [-]
It is very likely false that Iran had nuclear weapons, or was within weeks of having them. This was also the position of US intelligence, until they were forced by higher-ups to speak different words.
Of course, Iran very much wanted the ability to make a nuke, and they probably could have had one ready in 1 or 2 years. But the proof put forward in defense of this strike is claiming Iran was weeks away from nukes. That proof is dubious.
(Also interesting to consider how US retreat from the nuclear deal under Trump 1 has affected and shaped the current situation)
ExoticPearTree 10 hours ago [-]
> Remember that in the middle east, Iran is considered a dire enemy.
It's a dire enemy because they're Shia and the rest (with some exception in Eastern Saudi Arabia) are Sunni.
jameslk 16 hours ago [-]
Yes, dubious proof. A quick Google search can reveal this claim has been bs for decades, consistently evaluated by the US’ own intelligence, up until a day ago [0]
No it hasn't, you don't sit on 60%-enriched Uranium for 3 years (they announced it back in 2022!) if you plan to make a bomb.
IAEA also confirmed that Iran didn't have ongoing military nuclear project.
The reason why they raised their enrichment level was to raise their bargaining power to force the US to come back to the negotiation table in an attempt to get rid of the sanctions.
They almost succeeded since US and Iran were supposed to meet last Sunday, but that was not taking Israel into account, which killed the chief negotiator and convinced Trump to bomb Iran just 3 days in the “two weeks” negotiation deadline he had set earlier this week.
rocqua 15 hours ago [-]
Do you think there will be boots on the ground? It seems more likely to me that Trump will escalate only through air attacks, fail to achieve much, and then either end the war by walking away, or throwing nukes.
Quite different from the Iraq war.
fastball 18 hours ago [-]
Impressively prescient on the part of the Top Gun sequel. This is basically the plot, just with more close calls and less "well that was kinda easy".
jihadjihad 5 hours ago [-]
Kinda easy when you can drop a GPS guided bus from 50k feet and have no fear of return fire
17 hours ago [-]
totetsu 16 hours ago [-]
And meanwhile the biggest threat to all our security, the climate crisis goes unaddressed.
disposition2 11 hours ago [-]
Worse than unaddressed, purposely preventing data collection / publication that would allow us to better assess the effects of climate change.
> In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product.
Well, bombing a country after appointing a 22 year old heritage foundation intern as head of terrorism prevention seems like a good attempt at changing that.
> And meanwhile the biggest threat to all our security, the climate crisis goes unaddressed.
That the climate crisis is the biggest threat to our security is the biggest fallacy of our times. It's not that climate change is unimportant, just that it needs to be evaluated to its fair potential consequences, compared to e.g. an all-out war.
hkpack 3 minutes ago [-]
These are all parts of the same equation.
dudefeliciano 14 hours ago [-]
and people like Greta Thunberg are labelled self-serving narcisists who deserve getting more scorn than our political leaders who we accept as being "just so".
blueflow 11 hours ago [-]
Greta does get called mean things not because of her beliefs, but there is something about her (personal) behavior that makes her unlikable to many people.
UncleMeat 8 hours ago [-]
The "she is unlikable" argument is just working backwards. It is a mechanism to criticize climate activism without having to talk about the ways in which climate change is a crime against our children. There is no possible behavior that she could take that would not produce this "she is unlikable" response except to never speak in public whatsoever.
blueflow 8 hours ago [-]
A bit less of the superlatives would help.
> ... talk about the ways in which climate change is a crime against our children.
For example, how is this phrase supposed to work, rhetorically. Shaming people into joining your cause?
UncleMeat 7 hours ago [-]
Don't you think it is funny that you are doing the same thing people are doing to Thunberg?
I do not believe that it would help. Respectability politics does not have an especially strong track record. Complaints merely shift.
I believe very deeply that climate change is a crime against our children. This is not me hyperbolizing.
blueflow 5 hours ago [-]
I get it, your beliefs are strong, so must be your politics. Its somehow my fault for not liking your methods.
Gnah, just find your supporters elsewhere...
UncleMeat 5 hours ago [-]
I will. I am not demanding that you end up as a supporter. What I'm saying is that I do not expect that me choosing different words would make you a supporter even if I tried.
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Aachen 9 hours ago [-]
You really don't have to personally like someone for them to have useful information
The nazi party member Pascual Jordan contributed significantly to quantum physics but it's rarely mentioned because of that association. On the flip side, also the nazis ignored his suggestions for advanced weaponry, to their detriment I would imagine, because he valued jewish scientific contributions and so was considered unreliable politically. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascual_Jordan, discovered via AstroGeo podcast)
Also consider that you're on hacker news. Hacker ethics, or at least the version I've internalised, include judging people by what they say, not who is saying it (race, gender, and authority are commonly mentioned, but charismacy could also easily fall in that category)
blueflow 9 hours ago [-]
I'm confused about your argument. At first, i didn't contest her cause or beliefs or usefulness of information. And second, I'm talking about how she speaks. I do not have good words to describe it (inflammatory, immature, full of self?). I do not believe this is a bogus criterium in the sense of the hacker ethics.
mrbombastic 10 hours ago [-]
Are you sure you are not just buying a narrative being pushed to you? Who benefits from Greta Thunberg the outspoken activist against climate change and Israel’s campaign in Gaza being labelled a narcissist?
wat10000 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah, her behavior of being outspoken and blunt. And female, of course.
harambae 14 hours ago [-]
Well it is odd how Greta Thunberg pivoted to Palestine as her issue, given that climate change is, in her own words, the greatest risk to us all.
Feels a little bit narcissistic.
Findecanor 10 hours ago [-]
She has of course the right to get involved in any issue she cares about, just as everyone else.
But I think it was a bad move of hers to make the organisation "Fridays for Future" she had founded pivot towards other issues other than Climate Change.
She should have kept her engagements separate.
WickyNilliams 11 hours ago [-]
A brutal war leaving untold numbers of children dead is a reasonable thing to focus on, is it not?
Additionally, military operations are terrible for the climate. The US military is (was?) responsible for more pollution/emissions than most countries, for instance.
Swenrekcah 12 hours ago [-]
There are many issues one cam care about and some can be more urgent even if not the most serious.
I guess she’s hoping she can help humanitarian aid being delivered to Gaza where people are starving and dying right now.
I respect her for her efforts in both goals, even if I care more about handling climate change.
dudefeliciano 13 hours ago [-]
> pivoted to Palestine as her issue
Is that the case? she supports many other causes too, and they do not conflict the idea of climate change being the greatest risk. In her own words climate justice and social justice are inseparable and I can see that point.
We are now discussing the narcissism of Greta, a well meaning activist, rather than that of the president of peace, who just bombed Iran. The narcisism of the man who ran on "drill baby drill" is somehow acceptable, was exactly my point.
dijit 13 hours ago [-]
She is spending nearly all of her political energy on Palestine and anti-Israel protests.
So, its very fair for people to pick up on it, he movements are very public as she is a public figure now.
Well, iran tried to address it by using nuclear energy to offset CO2 emissions, but alas the world attacked it. (i m not being serious)
jopsen 4 hours ago [-]
What are you talking about this will make oil price spike, best thing you could do to support the green transition :)
Joking ofc, but any oil price spike will have more impact that policy changes at this point.
hashstring 14 hours ago [-]
not just unaddressed, it worsens significantly…
password54321 8 hours ago [-]
The pattern continues. Continue to create a power vacuum in the middle east, leaving the two military heavyweights: Israel and Turkey to take over. The question is when will the inevitable clash between them happen?
jmyeet 8 hours ago [-]
Oh, that's an easy question. It will never happen. Why? Because they're both US puppets in the region.
You can't look at what the leaders of these countries say. You look at what they do. Turkey's population, for example, is extremely sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. Erdogan will even get up there and bang the drums about Israel's evils. But that's just to placate the populace. In reality, he's done absolutely nothing when he could fatally wound Israel if he so chose.
There are allegations Erdogan's family (his son, specifically) is still doing business with Israel. Israel and Turkey have largely cooperated with the collapse of Syria. Both regimes simply cannot exist without material support, arms specifically, from the US.
What could turkey do? Cut off Israel's energy imports. IIRC ~40% of Israel's energy comes from Azerbijan from a pipeline that transits Turkey. Erdogan could absolutely shut it off if he wanted to. That would absolutely cripple Israel.
But he doesn't. Because he's not actually opposed to Israel.
password54321 8 hours ago [-]
Domestic military production in Turkey is ramping up especially in air defence while currently building the "Steel Dome" obviously inspired by Israel's Iron Dome [0] and partially in response to Israel's military conquest. Israel funded the PKK in Syria to attack Turkish armed forces [1] though the PKK have recently dissolved.
Whoever is really incapable to understand why Israel cannot accept a state to have nuclear weapons that openly calls for their annihilation should never be allowed to write code in production.
regularjack 1 hours ago [-]
Please. The Israeli government is currently engaged in genocide, and has been illegally occupying neighboring lands for decades. They are not the good guys
markus_zhang 22 hours ago [-]
OK what was done was done. What should we expect the political fallout in Iran?
tptacek 22 hours ago [-]
It's really hard to say, but probably not good (there was an Atlantic article about this last week). Part of the dynamic here is the idea that the SL can't back down without losing so much domestic credibility that he puts the regime at risk; being in a shooting war with the West probably reinforces the regime's position. The flip side of this is that I don't think there were many signs that the opposition was in position to challenge the SL any time soon.
energy123 18 hours ago [-]
They lack the capability to do much aside from disrupt shipping with SRBMs. They've taken down only one drone, which is one less than the Houthis. Their ballistic capability is heavily degraded. Their military leadership is gone. Their airforce is gone. Their air defense is gone. They're a paper tiger and I don't understand why people still think there's the prospect of some kind of grand retaliation. They're not holding back, they just can't do anything.
Aloisius 18 hours ago [-]
As if conventional responses are the only way to retaliate. We are talking about Iran here. They're all about asymmetric warfare.
energy123 18 hours ago [-]
Their intelligence heads are also all gone. What kind of response do you envisage?
Aloisius 18 hours ago [-]
Well. Some guys with a tiny fraction of the funding Iran has managed to fly a few airliners into some buildings a few years back.
So, I imagine there are perhaps unconventional options available to a country which is fully willing to fund terrorist groups for decades against a country with a very large amount of largely unprotected infrastructure.
But who knows? It just seems a bit premature to argue Iran's defeat. Feels a bit... mission accomplished.
energy123 17 hours ago [-]
They were already doing that in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Iraq and Bahrain. They weren't holding back before, and they won't hold back after. But their ability to do that is now severely degraded. The officials overseeing these programs are now gone. The weapons they were sending to these groups are now reduced.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
Even more reason for them to go. It’s not good enough to continue taking it from Iran.
Aloisius 18 hours ago [-]
Ahh, trying to bomb your way to regime change in the Middle East. This feels so familiar. What could possibly go wrong?
If only those who advocated for war were forced to fight in them.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
I fought in Iraq.
emilsedgh 17 hours ago [-]
Impressive appetite for war.
firesteelrain 17 hours ago [-]
Thanks!
Aloisius 17 hours ago [-]
Will you be volunteering to fight in Iran next? And any wars that fall out of it from a country with twice the population of Iraq being destabilized?
firesteelrain 17 hours ago [-]
I am already volunteering
But I dont think we are invading
Obama attacked Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. We aren’t there now are we?
December 1, 2012 - 300th drone strike on Pakistan.
Obama executed 563 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan alone while in office.
seanmcdirmid 17 hours ago [-]
> Obama attacked Pakistan
I’m scratching my head on this because Pakistan was and is still a US ally, but I guess you mean the Bin Laden operation?
From your link:
"However, despite the public opposition of Pakistani officials, multiple former Prime Ministers gave covert permission to the United States to carry out these attacks."
Makes sense, they were in the tribal areas where I assume the government was losing control of their monsters.
firesteelrain 12 hours ago [-]
Point is we weren’t at war with those countries.
Clinton - Yugoslavia 1999
Obama - Airstrikes on Libya in 2011
Goes back to the War Powers Act of 1973.
spacechild1 5 hours ago [-]
Are you proud of that?
the_gipsy 14 hours ago [-]
Are you ready for another 9/11?
firesteelrain 12 hours ago [-]
Come on man. Do you really want blood on your hands with that comment?
the_gipsy 12 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure I understand what you mean, perhaps my comment sounded snarky? But I don't think it's unwarranted either.
9/11 was not a direct response to any US invasion, but the London and Madrid bombings were a direct response to the second Iraq invasion. I would be surprised if there will be no terrorist attacks on American soil.
firesteelrain 11 hours ago [-]
In those cases it was performed by non state actors
Iran is a state which cannot project power. If they do try to hit the homeland via proxy you can almost guarantee we will hit back harder.
They didn’t do much after we killed their general who also was a sponsor of terrorism in the region. Any effects will be regionalized
the_gipsy 10 hours ago [-]
I don't know why you are so confident that no terrorist attacks will happen this time. I would argue that now it's even worse, because Israel is pulling strings. Every single Trump "deal" has fallen flat, he just now realized that smear campaigns don't work on an international level. But bombing a country to submit them to sign some deal is not going to work out either - you need to bomb AND talk smooth to get something, but Trump is basically just talking shit as usual. It won't work out unless he blows it up into a full ground invasion, with countless people dying - including Americans.
There will be another 9/11.
firesteelrain 10 hours ago [-]
> There will be another 9/11
Then this just confirms that Iran is a terrorist regime.
the_gipsy 9 hours ago [-]
Just like the USA and Israel. Don't complain later.
firesteelrain 8 hours ago [-]
Not going to happen
Iran will do some nominal attacks. There is little power projection that they will do. I bet they will focus their attacks on Israel which has been happening already.
the_gipsy 8 hours ago [-]
But why not? Do you think that the general sentiment is somehow gone? Or that you can submit terrorists by force?
firesteelrain 7 hours ago [-]
Because Iran's leadership isn’t stupid. They know a full-on attack against the US would bring overwhelming retaliation and possibly collapse the regime. They've been hit before (like when Soleimani was killed) and their response was pretty measured. They’ll do something to save face. Maybe hit a US base through proxies or ramp up attacks on Israel-but a direct war with the US? Not worth it for them. Too much to lose.
the_gipsy 6 hours ago [-]
9/11 and the other attacks were not a war, precisely.
You'll get a decade of terrorism, and the more you bomb Iran the worse it will get.
firesteelrain 6 hours ago [-]
I don’t think we’d see something like 9/11 again. Attacks on the US homeland bring a level of blowback that even Iran’s hardliners would want to avoid. But I totally agree there’ll be fallout in the region. Expect more proxy attacks on US bases, shipping lanes, and of course Israel. That kind of long, drawn-out pressure is way more in line with how Iran operates. Not total war
But why does Iran get to take workers hostage for 444 days in 1979, conduct Beirut embassy bombing in 1983, then the Beirut barracks bombing in same year, 1982-1991 Hezbollah (Iran sponsored) kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon, TWA 847 Hijacking, December 1983 Kuwait Embassy Bombing, June 1996 Khobar Towers Bombing, multiple EFP attacks on US forces in Iraq, May 2011 Camp Liberty Rocket Attack, 2011 IRGC plot to assassinate US officials, Dec 2019 Kirkuk base attack, etc
How is this any different than your 9/11 scenario and Iran has been doing it for 40 years?
dunekid 13 hours ago [-]
Fought? Was it a fight? Killing civilians from choppers? No American ever fought in Iraq.
firesteelrain 12 hours ago [-]
Ok
jopsen 3 hours ago [-]
Ukraine just demonstrated how to mess with long range aviation parked in the open.
I'm not saying it's easy, but there are many soft targets in America.
But yeah, who knows. The wise choice here is to go home and not play. The US and Israel are not about to invade with ground forces.
And if they were it'd be without support from European countries.
ExoticPearTree 10 hours ago [-]
> Their intelligence heads are also all gone. What kind of response do you envisage?
It does not mean that their ability to gather intelligence or use it is 100% gone. It most likely means they are a bit in disarray because of their top-down command structure. And maybe it takes a day or two until they put someone in charge.
dudefeliciano 15 hours ago [-]
A tactital victory does not translate to a strategic victory. I'd like to remind you the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco by George W, that was followed by more than 10 years of war and hundreds of thousands dead.
Cyclone_ 18 hours ago [-]
Agree that they can't retaliate through their military, but if they did it would likely be through terror attacks on civilians.
gorbachev 15 hours ago [-]
It's going to be a very bad time for American interests and people outside of the United States in the next few years.
farts_mckensy 18 hours ago [-]
What planet have you been living on the past 25 years? Iran has a population of almost 100 million as well as a sizeable diaspora across the world. If even a small percentage of the population engages in terrorism, that translates into thousands of potential actors. And unlike a state-to-state war, this is the kind of distributed, unpredictable threat that’s much harder to deter or contain.
awongh 21 hours ago [-]
afaik Iran is a very very different case demographically from Iraq and Afghanistan- in terms of being bigger, more modern and secular. It seems like those are dynamics that make it harder to go to war/stay in war.
ummonk 21 hours ago [-]
Quite the contrary, the religious populace is more likely to fall in line and decide the government knows best; it’s the secular populace that is demanding retaliation and critical of the government for not pursuing nuclearization already.
YZF 20 hours ago [-]
This doesn't sound right to me. Sources?
One data point I heard recently was 80% of Iranians oppose the current regime. That said I've also heard there is wide support for Iran to have a nuclear program. Presumably as a matter of national pride. I would still imagine the secular population to be less inclined to go to war with Israel in general.
The only Iranians I've personally talked to are ones that live in the west. They generally want to have peace with Israel and want to see the regime removed. Again very anecdotally they are still not happy about Israel bombing Iran but if the regime is actually somehow magically removed I don't think attacking Israel would be a high priority for a hypothetical secular or democratic regime.
tdeck 19 hours ago [-]
The fact that someone dislikes their government's current ruling regime doesn't mean they want the US to invade and install a puppet government instead. It's a false dichotomy.
> if the regime is actually somehow magically removed I don't think attacking Israel would be a high priority
Attacking Israel hasn't been a high priority for Iran. When Israel bombed an Iranian consulate, Iran referred it to the security council and waited, but the security council took no action. When Israel carries out an assassination within Iran, Iran did the same thing. Only after the UN refused to do anything to hold Israel to account did Iran retaliate. Then recently Israel launched a massive series of strikes against Iran, assassinating top members of its military and blowing up apartment buildings. It seems clear that the Iranian government didn't want to go to war with Israel, but at a certain point they ran out of options.
Iran has been attacking Israelthrough its proxies. Israel struck the Iranian consulate in a country they're at war with meeting proxies they're at war with. This is indeed an escalation. As a response Iran launched a huge number of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, which is a major eacalation and direct attack.
throwaway2037 18 hours ago [-]
> Attacking Israel hasn't been a high priority for Iran.
Really?
It is interesting that you made no mention of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, not Houthi in Yemen. All are well-known proxies for Iran to militarily harass Israel. They all receive direct funds and weapons from Iran.
sebmellen 18 hours ago [-]
lol. Watch Khameni’s morning broadcast where they have hundreds of delusional adherents shouting “Death to America, Death to Israel” 50 times in a row. I’m sure you’ll come out feeling the same way.
If you're in Iran it makes sense that you would want that if you feel that Israel is a threat. (But it doesn't make it a good idea).
I meant that demographically, if your populace isn't as poor, battle hardened and religious (like Afghanistan) maybe going into a long ground war is less politically feasible?
In Afghanistan they had basically just been fighting a war, where the last war in Iran was 30 years ago?
sealeck 21 hours ago [-]
> I meant that demographically, if your populace isn't as poor, battle hardened and religious (like Afghanistan) maybe going into a long ground war is less politically feasible?
> 95,000 Iranian child soldiers were casualties during the Iran–Iraq War, mostly between the ages of 16 and 17, with a few younger
> The conflict has been compared to World War I: 171 in terms of the tactics used, including large-scale trench warfare with barbed wire stretched across trenches, manned machine gun posts, bayonet charges, human wave attacks across a no man's land, and extensive use of chemical weapons such as sulfur mustard by the Iraqi government against Iranian troops, civilians, and Kurds. The world powers United States and the Soviet Union, together with many Western and Arab countries, provided military, intelligence, economic, and political support for Iraq. On average, Iraq imported about $7 billion in weapons during every year of the war, accounting for fully 12% of global arms sales in the period.
awongh 21 hours ago [-]
That was 40 years ago though. So no one fighting on the ground in that war would be fighting on the ground in a war that starts today.
jjk166 20 hours ago [-]
No, but they're the ones making the decisions about fighting such a war. The child soldiers in the 1980s are the politicians, the diplomats, and the generals in the 2020s.
awongh 19 hours ago [-]
They say that for WWI that it was one of the aspects that kept it "more civilized" (whatever that means in the context of war).
BolexNOLA 20 hours ago [-]
“…and we turned out just fine!”
ummonk 21 hours ago [-]
Ah I see what you mean. Yes they don’t have the birth rate (or the suicidal fanaticism) to sustain a decades long attritional war against an occupation like Afghanistan or Yemen can.
But given the size of the existing Iranian population and geography, and the lack of any significantly sized pre-existing anti-government military faction, I’m not sure the US military is large enough to even occupy Iran in the first place, absent a draft.
awongh 20 hours ago [-]
It would be reaaalllly stupid for the USA to invade Iran.
Hopefully Iran is the one that blinks for the reasons above.
MichaelZuo 20 hours ago [-]
Why would they blink when they know they are safe from a boots on the ground invasion for the forseeable future?
jt_b 19 hours ago [-]
I think they probably like having an GDP 25x larger than North Korea's. Gets a lot harder to export your products around the world when you're squared off against the US.
seanmcdirmid 18 hours ago [-]
They still trade oil with China, that is as much as the rest of the world they need. Of course, getting trade overland is a bit more difficult than by boat which is mostly cut off during a war.
MichaelZuo 19 hours ago [-]
How does that follow?
sebmellen 18 hours ago [-]
We don’t need to occupy Iran to absolutely decimate their economic output.
riffraff 17 hours ago [-]
What else are you going to do? Iran has been sanctioned by the US for decades.
Can you really sell "we'll be bombing civilians for years"?
gregoryl 19 hours ago [-]
> if you feel that Israel is a threat
Israel is very clearly, without any question or doubt, a serious threat to every one of its neighbors.
It has a peace treaty with Jordan and Egypt. Also, they signed the Abraham Accords with UAE and Bahrain. As far I know, there is no risk of conflict with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, nor Oman. Who else am I missing?
Half joking: (ignoring Trump's recent "threats") Is the US a threat to Canada or Mexico?
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
Mexico is more of a threat. So many drugs flow North. It’s slowly killing generations of people for decades.
sebmellen 18 hours ago [-]
Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus? Really?
golol 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ummonk 16 hours ago [-]
There isn't peace in the West Bank - Israel is actively conducting military operations there.
I don't know that much. But I have heard about how in terms of daily outlook a lot of Iranians aren't very religious. Esp. compared to other countries in the region.
dralley 20 hours ago [-]
On the other hand, the internal Cyber Police HQ got bombed today. If the institutions of internal suppression are sufficiently disrupted, maybe some form of resistance could be form. Who knows.
anigbrowl 19 hours ago [-]
People keep wishcasting this idea, but just because many/most Iranian people don't like the regime does not mean they want to be bombed by Israel/the USA.
throwup238 19 hours ago [-]
The one thing we’ve learned over and over again since WWII: strategic bombing does not actually achieve any objective except temporarily disrupting logistics. If anything it strengthens the resolve of the people being bombed, giving the target regime more ammunition to carry on.
throwaway2037 18 hours ago [-]
Did the US ever invade Japanese home islands (Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu, Hokkaido) during the war? I am pretty sure they got some of Okinawa then dropped two nukes, then Japan surrendered. Do I have the order of events incorrect?
davejagoda 17 hours ago [-]
The order of events is correct, but leaves out the Soviet invasion of Manchuria which started just before the bombing of Nagasaki.
paganel 13 hours ago [-]
Yes, you're most probably not taking into consideration the Soviets' incursion into Northern Manchuria, which started on August 9th. The last thing the Japanese leadership wanted was to see a big part of their country turn communist.
dralley 19 hours ago [-]
This is dumb. Strategic bombing did work in WWII, but it was never as effective as its advocates claimed at the time mostly because the bombs rarely hit anything important. They had to drop far more munitions than originally envisioned to actually do critical damage to infrastructure.
You can't really compare WWII dumb bombs dropped from 25,000 feet to modern precision weapons that can hit precisely the weakest point on a target, times thousands of targets, within the span of a few hours or days.
I mean, we literally just watched a massively successful strategic bombing campaign over the last week! Desert Storm was massively successful, Iraqi Freedom (the actual invasion, pre-nationbuilding part) was massively successful, Israel's bombing of Hezbollah was massively successful. I don't know how anyone can argue that strategic bombing with precision munitions isn't successful.
gherkinnn 16 hours ago [-]
Strategic bombing doesn't work. With the exception of maybe nukes, wars aren't won from the sky and strategic objectives are hard to achieve. The bombing prior to Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom was operational bombing, its purpose was to flatten resistance so the Army could roll in.
It appears that no matter what, no matter the technology involved (maybe with the exception of nukes), you always need grunts on the ground to hold it.
13 hours ago [-]
ivape 18 hours ago [-]
Cambodia says hi. No one did it better than Kissinger.
dralley 17 hours ago [-]
What part of "strategic precision bombing is not the same as carpet bombing" did you not grasp.
Yes, I agree that bombing random forest is not that useful.
ivape 13 hours ago [-]
What precision bombs were used to level Gaza? See, I don’t believe the word “precision” here, one too many murderous actors involved.
ronnier 20 hours ago [-]
With all respect please type out SL. I and many others don’t know what that means. For us it’s just two random letters thrown into a sentence
moosedev 20 hours ago [-]
I assume it's Supreme Leader.
citizenkeen 20 hours ago [-]
Supreme Leader
20 hours ago [-]
standardUser 20 hours ago [-]
> What should we expect the political fallout in Iran?
The Iranian regimes favorite enemy just played their part to perfection, so we should expect that to compel the majority of Iranians to rally behind their government in the face of a brutal foreign invasion by not one but BOTH of their standard-bearer arch-nemeses.
jimbob45 18 hours ago [-]
so we should expect that to compel the majority of Iranians to rally behind their government in the face of a brutal foreign invasion by not one but BOTH of their standard-bearer arch-nemeses.
Organized how? There’s no internet. I hope Kinko’s is still open because they’re going to need a lot of leaflets to organize anything meaningful.
cbg0 17 hours ago [-]
There's still television and radio.
LAC-Tech 17 hours ago [-]
I talked to my friend in Iran today online, shorly before the US bombing.
narrator 20 hours ago [-]
Propaganda isn't everything. Iran having a nuclear bomb or not having one does count for more than whether we played our part in the bad guy in their narrative.
jjk166 19 hours ago [-]
Well that pre-supposes that Iran was actively working on acquiring the bomb, that this course of action would stop them from getting the bomb, and that Iran having the bomb is actually a severe issue.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
It’s impossible to know, all we do know is that they were orders of magnitude above the enrichment required for anything else except bombs.
19 hours ago [-]
Beefin 17 hours ago [-]
you willing to take that risk?
hotmeals 15 hours ago [-]
If it wasn't suicide and I was the big boss, I would get some nuclear subs for my irrelevant South American nation ASAP. The "rules based order" is just wet toilet paper, who's to say that in 50 years we or our neighbors aren't next?
Gringos have always been crazy, but now y'all are getting extra spicy. Qaddafi, Ukraine and now Iran. Get nukes or bust is the name of the game now.
Beefin 9 hours ago [-]
more like if we see you're getting nukes, go bust - that's a world i much prefer to live in.
vkou 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not willing to take the risk of the world having tens of thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at eachother, but nobody asked my opinion on it.
What's another hundred?
PS. For every one of these adventures the US embarks on, it makes a strategy of nuclear proliferation more rational for those seeking it.
Beefin 9 hours ago [-]
in what universe is that happening? you think the world is safer with even a 10% likliehood of the world's largest terror network getting access to WMD? you're off your rocker.
vkou 4 hours ago [-]
The US over the past few decades and Russia over the past five years and Israel over the past year have inflicted quite a bit of terror, and they all have nuclear weapons.
None of them would have done it if their victims had them.
Iran's contribution to inflicting misery, death, and indiscriminate destruction on the world is a rounding error in comparison, and its bound by the same formula of MAD as anyone else is.
17 hours ago [-]
einpoklum 17 hours ago [-]
Are you suggesting that states may bomb each other when they don't want to "take the risk" of the other state possibly carrying out a dangerous attack on them in the future?
Plus, the nuclear issue is the excuse, not the reason. Palestine, Lebanon, Syria (+ regime change, sorta), Iraq (+ regime change), Afghanistan and now Iran. All attacked repeatedly and extensively over the past two decades.
paxys 21 hours ago [-]
There isn't going to be political fallout. The Iranian regime has systemically wiped out all dissent over the last decade and a half. The remaining population is all either pro-Khamenei or too powerless to speak out. If anything an unprovoked war will give the country stronger reason to distrust the west and rally behind their leader.
markus_zhang 13 hours ago [-]
What about the factions within the regime? Maybe someone is going to take responsibility for all these failures?
sfifs 20 hours ago [-]
I would worry about the fallout to the rest of us - Persian Gulf closed to shipping,maybe oil fields attacked, Oil at 300, Recession.
philistine 18 hours ago [-]
I chose a very good time to buy an electric car.
nirav72 19 hours ago [-]
Iran doesn’t quite have the capability to shutdown the shipping lanes in the PG. At least not in any way thats sustainable for a long period. A few days at best. A USN CG would put a stop to it in a hurry.
sfifs 17 hours ago [-]
Let's not confuse capability with intention and consequences Straits of Hormuz is barely 40km wide and the Persian gulf is very shallow. Blocking it very feasible for nations bordering it who are willing to take the consequences. We don't know if they are and if so, unblocking it also has consequences in terms of requiring committing to prolonges military occupation. Ultimately, it appears the military industrial complex has won by replacing defense $$ in Afghanistan & Ukraine with yet another conflict.
awnird 19 hours ago [-]
Didn't you guys say the same thing about the Houthis? How do you still fall for this?
nirav72 17 hours ago [-]
The Houthi threat was in and around the red sea. Iran’s naval reach is limited to with whatever it is they call a “Navy” in the Gulf of Oman. Almost on other side of the Arabian peninsula. Also the Houthis got pummeled once the U.S showed up. The U.S didn’t even continue a sustained campaign to wipe them out. Something it is more than capable of doing with just a single carrier group. That’s not even counting the Saudis getting involved.
throwaway_dang 12 hours ago [-]
Because they're dumb and caught up in the propaganda. They think war is a video game and it's normal for a country to just bomb a country.
gorbachev 15 hours ago [-]
Putin is probably having Russian caviar dinners with his oil company buddies right now. The rise in oil price is very bad news for Ukraine.
TiredOfLife 14 hours ago [-]
Iran already closed Red Sea.
yyyk 21 hours ago [-]
For now, nothing (everyone is kinda busy).
The first infliction point would be to see whether the regime intends to strike at US forces or do they intend to climb down. IMHO, that would be suicidal, but it doesn't mean they won't do it.
The second point is when they decide to end the war (they aren't doing well), and all the accusations start flying. Then there'll be political fallout.
15 hours ago [-]
yibg 18 hours ago [-]
Optimistically given how much Trump loves attention and declaring victories:
- Trump declares mission accomplished. Looks tough to his base, appeases Israel and calls it a day
- Ditto for Israel. Declares Iran's nuclear ambitions over and re-affirms the friendship between the US and Israel
- Iran lobs a few more missiles at Israel in retaliation to provide legitimacy at home and moves on
Everyone declares victory and gets an off ramp.
seydor 17 hours ago [-]
> Looks tough to his base
Actually his base is very disappointed by him becoming a total neocon. The influential ones are already speaking out , harshly
tryauuum 10 hours ago [-]
political fallout? if you tell people the west hates you and then west bombs you, it makes it easier for you to continue preaching what you preached
TeeMassive 21 hours ago [-]
The point of Iran of enriching U beyond civilian use but not actually going full military grade was leverage. They're the only Shiia super power in the reigion. Nobody likes them.
So what can we expect:
* a ground invasion is pretty much out of the question considering the geography or Iran and its neighboring countries.
* Iran destroys every oil production and transport sites in the region (say good by to your election, Republican Party)
* they could fast produce the bomb and test it underground as a final warning
* OR they fail and resort to more desperate measure like a dirty bomb
* OR they fail and there is some sort of regime change
* Or there is some kind of extended war of attrition and it makes the refugee crisis from the past 20 years seem like it was a mere tourist wave.
In any case, this will accentuate the Qaddafi effect and more nations will follow the North Korea option of nuclear "unauthorized" nuclear dissuasion, which is also the case for Israel by the way.
Talking of which, Israel will become politically radioactive in the world. Its support is already negative in nearly all countries and has dropped significantly in the US such as the evangelicals.
handfuloflight 21 hours ago [-]
> Its support is already negative in nearly all countries and has dropped significantly in the US such as the evangelicals.
You mean they changed their mind and want to postpone the Armageddon now?
9 hours ago [-]
RickJWagner 20 hours ago [-]
Evangelical here.
That statement is ignorant.
handfuloflight 20 hours ago [-]
Do you speak for them all? If you do, please clarify.
RickJWagner 20 hours ago [-]
I speak for myself, of course. And the people I know in my community.
Do you believe all evangelicals believe the same thing, and that we want the end of the world to come immediately? Where would you get such a strange idea? I can assure you it is an ignorant thought.
eddythompson80 17 hours ago [-]
Thank you for speaking up man. I'm an evangelical atheist and get sick of people generalizing what all evangelicals think too.
shadowfox 12 hours ago [-]
What exactly is an "evangelical atheist" ?
handfuloflight 12 hours ago [-]
At one point in the history of the Internet, it was synonymous with Redditor.
handfuloflight 19 hours ago [-]
Did I say they all believed in the same thing? I would not make such an absurd claim when Christianity itself is so fractured.
Take it up with the sources listed in these articles:
You are clearly ignorant of what views come under the heading of the evangelicals.
RickJWagner 19 hours ago [-]
You said “you mean they changed their mind”. Who were you referring to?
I am obviously proof standing before you that not all evangelicals believe what you suggested.
So who were you referring to?
skissane 18 hours ago [-]
I think when a lot of people here say "evangelicals" they actually mean "dispensational premillennialists"–who are a significant chunk of "evangelicals", but not the whole
But to be fair to the dispensational premillennialists, even many of them would consider the idea that Israeli (or US) military action is somehow "accelerating the end-times" to be distasteful – whether or not they think that action is justified in itself.
handfuloflight 19 hours ago [-]
They, as in those evangelicals who subscribe to apocalyptic accelerationism.
RickJWagner 5 hours ago [-]
Ah. Well, had you said this in the first place the conversation would be a different one.
Yes, there is a subset of evangelicals that think along those lines. But not all of us.
jrflowers 19 hours ago [-]
Could be talking about, for one example, Christians United for Israel, a single evangelical organization with ten million American members.
Are those ten million Evangelicals somehow not part of the mainstream? Like is it ten million outcasts that the majority of evangelicals do not claim? That seems unlikely due to the fact that the count of self-reported Christian Zionists is in the multiple tens of millions in the US.
What I think is going on here is you either do want to speak for all evangelicals, and want to convince people that they all believe what you believe, or you are somehow part of a community in which you haven’t heard of or spoken to nearly any of its members. These are the only two ways to make sense of the “who are you talking about?” question; you are either being willfully untruthful about tens of millions of evangelicals, or you simply, somehow, haven’t heard about tens of millions of evangelicals.
19 hours ago [-]
tolerance 18 hours ago [-]
You're reacting emotionally to handfuloflight's witty remark and now you're caught in this strait-laced and dignified bit to mask you being offended by the remark and caught making a very poor argument.
Would it be fair for me to assume that you are an Evangelical who doesn't support Israel's genocide under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for (i.e., the "apocalyptic accelerationism" handfuloflight refers to)?
Would it be fair for me to assume that handfuloflight's remark was solid but fell short in the generalizing way that jokes often lay, because of the possibility that there are Evangelicals who don't support Israel's genocide under the theological pretenses that other Evangelical's are known for because it's a terrible look and indicative of the contemporary fractures that capture the faith at large?
Both of ya'll need to be more forthright with your positions instead of performing this constipated do-si-do along the HN guidelines. Give me a good flame war, get flagged, ring up dang and the new dude, or just downvote each other.
handfuloflight 18 hours ago [-]
I came for the flame war, I stayed for the analysis.
RickJWagner 9 hours ago [-]
My point is that evangelicals are not a monolith, and not all share the same beliefs.
The originating comment makes no hint that it is referring to anything less than 100%. It’s like saying “Black people think…” or “Women want….”, which invariably leads to some not funny generalization. Suggesting all evangelicals want the world to end immediately is in the same vein, IMHO.
handfuloflight 9 hours ago [-]
I qualified twice that I did not mean it that as a blanket statement, so what new point are you trying to make?
RickJWagner 5 hours ago [-]
I’m now making the point that generalizing evangelicals as a monolith that can ‘change their mind’ in unison is akin to generalizing people by race, gender, etc. I hope you are in agreement on that one.
Had your first statement been clear in referring to the subset of evangelicals ( instead of using a pronoun that refers back to the whole, evangelicals ), the statement would not have been properly called ignorant. As it stands, it reads as if all evangelicals wish for Armageddon without delay, which is an ignorant statement.
handfuloflight 5 minutes ago [-]
You need to look at things in context. This was about specifically about evangelicals who showed support for Israel, this in itself is a subset.
Everyone in this thread seems to have understood it was not a blanket statement, except you.
tolerance 8 hours ago [-]
> Suggesting all evangelicals want the world to end immediately is in the same vein, IMHO.
But here's the thing. That wasn't the suggestion. The bunch of links that he gave you don't suggest that.
At least my impression is that there are a considerable amount of Evangelicals that support whatever you think is going on in Israel under theological pretenses. Any notion of timing carried by his initial remark is likely attributed to this.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the sum of the links handfuloflight shared. Maybe he should have done us the courtesy of spelling it out for us instead, as in, when you asked him:
> Do you believe all evangelicals believe the same thing, and that we want the end of the world to come immediately?
He should've answered the question straight up instead of (what I interpret as) responding to the emotional side of your comment:
> Where would you get such a strange idea? I can assure you it is an ignorant thought.
With an indirect explanation of his point through a bunch of links.
I get it, that's the responsible thing to do when the discourse is trying to present itself as something other than a flamewar, or something like that, which it might as well just be so we can all be more direct and upfront with what we think and feel instead of doing this half-bunned Socratic dialogue.
On the other hand, if someone tries to insult your intelligence in a sophomoric way it makes sense to leave them to their own devices and if they're so smart themselves they can read between the lines on their own.
Anyway, these are non-rhetorical, please-say-yes-or-no questions:
* Would it be fair for me to assume that you are an Evangelical who doesn't support whatever you think is going on in Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for (i.e., the "apocalyptic accelerationism" handfuloflight refers to)?
* Would it be fair for me to assume that handfuloflight's remark was solid but fell short in the generalizing way that jokes often lay, because of the possibility that there are Evangelicals who don't support whatever you think is going on Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelical's are known for, because it has grave moral implications and indicative of the contemporary fractures that capture the faith at large?
If you're offended, then suck it up and be open about your vulnerabilities instead of goading the other party into an exchange that they're better suited than you at carrying on. Maybe they'll show you the empathy you desire, within reason.
RickJWagner 5 hours ago [-]
No, your first assumption is not a fair one. Like many people, my religious views are not lock step with my political ones and the relationship is not straightforward.
I see handfuloflights remark as an attempted joke, alongside jokes that assume all Black people think alike, all women want the same thing, etc. Like those diverse groups, evangelicals are not a monolith, especially in political matters.
I’m not deeply offended, but I do want to signal that jokes generalizing people are generally not funny.
tolerance 3 hours ago [-]
In a way, I understand why his initial remark was stupid to make.
Especially when you say,
> I’m now making the point that generalizing evangelicals as a monolith that can ‘change their mind’ in unison is akin to generalizing people by race, gender, etc. I hope you are in agreement on that one.
And this is exactly why I raised my initial assumptions to you and why your answer was helpful.
When I asked:
> Would it be fair for me to assume that you are an Evangelical who doesn't support whatever you think is going on in Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for (i.e., the "apocalyptic accelerationism" handfuloflight refers to)?
What I tried to communicate was that my assumption is that your religious views are not in lock step with your political views in the ways that the generalization in question would suggest.
So when you say:
> Like many people, my religious views are not lock step with my political ones and the relationship is not straightforward.
This makes we want to understand what your views and their greater relationship are.
Additionally, are you upset that he made a generalization and that's all this is about? Or are you upset that he made a generalization that doesn't apply to you and you're trying to explain to us why that isn't the case. =
> I’m not deeply offended, but I do want to signal that jokes generalizing people are generally not funny.
Right. But I don't want to meander toward a discussion on humor, dry wit, et cetera, because although I identified the remark in question as a joke, that's all it is on the surface and it's implications are a lot more serious than that. Which is exactly why I would assume it isn't funny to you. And what makes the remark all the wiser in some ways, although not to you.
What I really want to figure out is what about his remark specifically upset you post-generalization, If according to your own answer to my assumption, you are an Evangelical who supports whatever you think is going on in Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for.
[Previously I described that as "genocide", but I modified it because I don't to make it sound like I'm trying to manipulate you into agreeing to a part of a premise that you don't agree with. I'm trying to dialogue in as best of faith as I can].
I love handfuloflight. He doesn't know this. But I do. And he does know now. And I think his wit backfired, for the reasons I've already explained.
And as much as your offense constrains you to this odd posture that I feel so compelled to unravel, I think that his wit constrained him to come up with a concept ("apocalyptic accelerationism") that constrains him to now having to argue his way outside of a an ad-hoc generalization.
At this point, the generalization that handfuloflight makes isn't about "accelerating the apocalypse" as much as the influence that Israel's geopolitics have on Evangelical beliefs concerning the apocalypse.
From your side, this is what I want to learn. If you don't want to keep beating this HN thread, my email is in my profile.
And if handfuloflight feels like I've wronged him in anyway, he should let me know however he feels is suitable.
hedora 19 hours ago [-]
A quick internet search says 80% of white male evangelicals voted for Trump in 2024. I assume they’re referring to that, since project 2025 is exactly what they accused the evangelicals of supporting.
Still 80 != 100, and not all evangelicals are white males. Alienating the reasonable evangelicals isn’t going to help fix stuff.
anigbrowl 19 hours ago [-]
C'mon man, you know there are a lot of biblical literalists who are all in on that end times stuff even if you and your social circle don't subscribe to it.
RickJWagner 10 hours ago [-]
I agree, there are some.
But not all, or even most.
jrflowers 19 hours ago [-]
What evangelical church doesn’t believe in the second coming or the significance of the holy land?
Like your pastor, at your evangelical church, preaches that these things are not literal?
Edit: As someone that grew up evangelical, and has had evangelical friends my entire life, it is very strange to see someone casually say that the rejection of biblical inerrancy is an evangelical thing. It stands in stark contrast to the theology that’s fundamental to the faith.
It is literally as odd as seeing someone get mad when another person says that sainthood or the Eucharist are fundamental tenets to Catholicism. I would certainly want them to clarify what exactly their priest was saying to make them feel otherwise.
It is a real religion with a real theology! “Evangelical” isn’t a vibe, it’s a distinct system of worship! Biblical prophecy is very fundamental and a strongly-held belief and value that is taught in every evangelical church I have ever heard of!
lunar-whitey 19 hours ago [-]
There are evangelical movements within American mainline Protestant denominations that broadly hold to amillenialism and do not concern themselves with contemporary speculation regarding eschatology. They receive less attention nationally because they are politically irrelevant.
jrflowers 18 hours ago [-]
Amillennialism does not necessarily mean a wholesale rejection of the notion of biblical prophecy. If anything it is largely a disagreement about what the fulfillment of biblical prophecy will look like.
That aside, of course there are always small movements in every faith, but that isn’t usually super meaningful or helpful when talking about the larger group. I’m sure you can find some Catholics that don’t believe in transubstantiation but nobody is out here painting the church as being Eucharist-neutral.
lunar-whitey 18 hours ago [-]
I would not characterize entities like the United Methodist Church or the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as small movements. Both are evangelical churches in the historical sense and neither has a specific position on contemporary political entities as they relate to Biblical prophecies.
RickJWagner 10 hours ago [-]
The statement was “they changed their mind and want to postpone the Armageddon now?”
This is not the same as believing in the second coming. It specifically deals with the timing, suggesting all evangelicals think alike and want Armageddon immediately.
hajile 9 hours ago [-]
The term you are looking for is dispensationalist. Most evangelicals seem to be dispensationalists who back Israel because of their apocalyptic eschatology, but not all evangelicals hold that belief.
Iran and Libya are very different places both in terms of history and current day.
I would expect Israel to win the political battle as well. The world likes winners and Israel is going to be a winner here. It winning will also enable it to address some of the issues that are a concern. Without Iran backing up Palestinian militants it is going to be easier for Israel to make some concessions that it couldn't otherwise.
You can already see a change of tone in Europe. Especially that Iran is aligned with Russia against Ukraine.
dh2022 21 hours ago [-]
For me the last few days show how militarily-impotent Iran is. Even if they had the nuclear bomb they would not be able to use it against Israel-because right now Iran had no air-defenses and Israel is rumored to have about 100 nuclear warheads.
I do not think Iran has any military options. Because it is not liked the Iranian regime does not have any political options either. So I have no idea what will happen-which makes the current situation so interesting to watch.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 20 hours ago [-]
<< For me the last few days show how militarily-impotent Iran is.
I am confused. So it is impotent or the greatest threat in the middle east?
dralley 19 hours ago [-]
Well, it certainly was the greatest threat. It's unlikely to remain so.
unethical_ban 20 hours ago [-]
Did dh say it was the greatest threat?
All this talk of Iran getting a nuke to hit Israel... doesn't the Iranian government know that it would instantly be destroyed the moment they used a nuclear weapon of any kind?
None of this makes sense.
roughly 20 hours ago [-]
> doesn't the Iranian government know that it would instantly be destroyed the moment they used a nuclear weapon of any kind?
YES. They Absolutely know this. The point of an Iranian nuke is deterrence, and the reason Israel finds that intolerable is that Israeli policy is to maintain the ability to unilaterally raise the stakes of a conflict past any of its neighbors.
invalidname 19 hours ago [-]
That just isn't true and assumes Western type of logic.
Iran doesn't just call death to America and death to Israel in every rally. They mean it. When they publish photos of their facilities I was shocked to see the US flag, then I understood it's on the floor. They walk on the Israeli and US flag every day in these places as an insult. As a westerner I find this pretty hilarious... But they are serious.
For reference I will point you to the Huttis... The main damage they do to Israel is waking up Israelis due to a missile alarm. As a result they lose hundreds of lives in bombings and crucial resources. That doesn't deter them. Hell, they don't even like the Palestinians since they are Sunni... It's a matter of being part of a Jihad.
Notice that this isn't true for all Muslims. The extremists are a death cult who believe that dying in a Jihad will send all of them to heaven. If they get a bomb it is very possible they won't care about the consequences in the same way a "normal" country cares about them.
roughly 18 hours ago [-]
No, the western kind of logic here is to assume the people we’ve taken as enemies are irrational and fanatical caricatures, instead of normal-ass humans who are attempting to maintain agency over their lives and responding to the actions of those around them.
I think if you look at the actions of Iran over the last 20 years and attempt to categorize it as one of either a geopolitical foe attempting to maintain some degree of control over their local surroundings OR an implacable suicidal death cult, one of those theories is going to fit the facts a whole lot better than the other, as evidenced by the fact that the Iranian regime is still in existence, despite all but daily attempts by both the US and Israel to bait them into attempting “suicide by global cop.”
invalidname 16 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying they're irrational. I'm saying that the basis for their rationality is different to ours. A rational westerner would rarely commit a suicide bombing in a civilian setting (it happens too). But it's common in these circles.
Another example would be the Islamic Jihad attacks prior to 2023. The Islamic Jihad is an organization in Gaza that is similar in purpose to Hamas but distinct. They fired missiles into Israel which led to an Israeli attack. Hamas very explicitly stood down and sent through normal channels that it isn't interested in escalation. This created in Israel a false sense of security which led to the "success" of the Oct 7th attacks. When someone says they want to kill you and aren't afraid of death, it is prudent to believe them.
Neither one of us can enter the minds of these people, but they had plenty of chances to stand down and compromise. They chose not to do that. I wish Trump hadn't quit the nuclear deal because I would have liked to know how that would have turned out. But this is the situation we have right now...
Iran does build up global terrorism and has continued to do that for decades. Their path to nuclear weapons would mean they could continue doing that and no one would be able to do anything even if they never actually use the bomb.
roughly 14 hours ago [-]
Again, I’d encourage you to stop thinking you’re dealing with people fundamentally different than you, and start considering why they’re acting the way they’re acting. You’ve referenced Palestinian fighters a couple times - I’d suggest the lens that these are fundamentally a different kind of people is probably going to tell you less about the current situation and how to change it for the better than the other lens, which is that these people are fundamentally human like you, and if you’re seeing extreme behavior, there’s probably extreme circumstances driving it.
To be clear, I’m not saying this to justify extreme or violent behavior, but to consistently act surprised when people act “irrationally” is to suggest either your definition of rational is wrong or your understanding of the circumstances are wrong. As the old joke goes, you can’t blame the mouse when the experiment fails.
invalidname 14 hours ago [-]
> Again, I’d encourage you to stop thinking you’re dealing with people fundamentally different than you, and start considering why they’re acting the way they’re acting.
So you're saying that there are motivations that would make you perform suicide bombings?
There are incentives by which you would sacrifice your children?
The vast majority of Iranians and Palestinians are good people. Same as everyone. The leadership and nutcases are vastly different than normal people.
I have friends in Gaza and the west bank. They are victims of these nutcases, this sort of mentality is tolerance of intolerance. They are victims of Hamas as the Iranian people are victims of their leadership.
> but to consistently act surprised when people act “irrationally” is to suggest either your definition of rational is wrong or your understanding of the circumstances are wrong
It isn't that they're irrational. Their decisions don't match western rationality which is based on different standards.
If you think that the death of your child will send him on a fast track to heaven that can seriously impact the rational choices you make down the line. It doesn't mean you can't speak calmly or even pretend to have a different set of objectives.
Their definition of reality leads them to a very different set of incentives and decisions. I understand exactly why the leadership wants nuclear weapons. They're paranoid and they aren't wrong in their paranoia, but that goes both ways. If Israel had listened to voices like this in the past then Saddam Husein and Assad would have had nuclear weapons. Luckily they don't and now we don't have to know what the Iranian leadership would have done. That's a good thing for everyone, especially for the Iranian people in the long term.
Assuming you're from the states, imagine the Mexican president calling death to America constantly, claiming it's their religious prerogative to destroy America and launch multiple terrorist cells against America... Then imagine them developing nuclear weapons... The USA would be justifiably paranoid.
teleforce 12 hours ago [-]
Not sure why are you very adamant in defending Israel's govt inhuman actions in all your postings? How do you sleep at night?
Not condoning suicide attack but early zionists in Israel are all the same attacking civilians by the same actions, and after more than hundreds years the autrocities still continue until today albeit in different inhuman forms [1].
Worst now they're using indiscriminate military bombings against Palestinian people mostly women and children that has no proper protection from state military [2]. From your logic and claims, zionist and Israel military don't match your so called western rationality and seems to be based on different standards.
Perhaps all these inhuman actions based on the fact that they wrongly believe that they're God's chosen people destined for the Heavens and will not be touched by the Hell fire for whatever autrocities they've committed? [3].
> Not sure why are you very adamant in defending Israel's govt inhuman actions in all your postings? How do you sleep at night?
I don't sleep great with all the constant rocket alarms because we're under fire and I have to take my kids to the safe room.
I'm not defending the Israeli government and very much didn't vote for them. I do explain specific policies that do make sense and the logic behind them.
> Not condoning suicide attack but early zionists in Israel are all the same attacking civilians by the same actions,
Nope. First off the use of the word "zionist" as a derogatory term is problematic. It just means "patriot" or the desire to live in Israel.
There were early attacks before the formation of Israel that can be broadly described as terrorist attacks. The difference in the severity and violence is staggering. E.g. the worst example is the hotel bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
But here are some huge differences:
* They called in advance to warn about the bomb - this was ignored due to human error
* They were hunted down by moderate Israelis
> and after more than hundreds years the autrocities still continue until today albeit in different inhuman forms
Here's a different take. Palestinians spent the past 120 years constantly fighting the Jews. Losing and making things worse for themselves. Had they accepted the Jews right to exist by their side we could have all prospered. Israel gave them multiple chances to end this. It offered them a state twice. It even left Gaza and cleared the settlements. Instead the people voted in Hamas and proceeded to take the billions given to them in order to build rockets and a war machine against Israel.
I'm not saying that Israel is innocent here. But as a country Israel did pretty much anything one could expect under such a situation.
> Worst now they're using indiscriminate military bombings against Palestinian people mostly women and children
Again. Not true and relies on false numbers/narratives. Bombing is very discriminate and it's based on intelligence. It's coordinated with legal oversight. There are failures for sure, but Israel is doing more to avoid civilian deaths than any country in history.
> From your logic and claims, zionist and Israel military don't match your so called western rationality and seems to be based on different standards.
Nope. It's the fact that you believe a false narrative propagated by Hamas that is the problem. That gives them an incentive to keep sacrificing Palestinian civilians to erode support for Israel under the false hope that it will cause trigger the countries demise.
> Perhaps all these inhuman actions based on the fact that they wrongly believe that they're God's chosen people destined for the Heavens and will not be touched by the Hell fire for whatever autrocities they've committed?.
I suggest looking at the demographics of Israel. Israel has one of the highest ratios of secular/atheists. It is a deeply liberal state. Tel Aviv is more gay than San Francisco. My kids go to school with Muslim kids who are also Israeli citizens and 20% of the population.
Hell, if I watched the nonsense John Oliver says I'd probably also hate Israel. The fact is, it's a very different country from the narrative some people are driving. The supposed facts you chose are deeply cherry picked.
But the people you're supposedly defending would stone a gay person or a woman for the crime of being raped. Have been behind multiple terrorist attacks against civilians in busses, malls, coffee shops and embassies. Have killed Americans and held them hostage. These are bad people.
Worse, their goal isn't independence. Their goal is to kill 10M Israelis. From the river to the sea means kill all Israelis.
teleforce 9 hours ago [-]
>I don't sleep great with all the constant rocket alarms because we're under fire and I have to take my kids to the safe room.
If you are direct descendants of the original Jews that have been living in the area for many centuries, I really hope that you and your family are safe from all the troubles.
But if you're of the new recent Jewish immigrants to the promised land of Israel, I've really bad news for you. Personally I'd migrate elsewhere than accidently caught in the perpetual crossfire [1],[2],[3].
> Israel has one of the highest ratios of secular/atheists
I'm not sure whether you're naive or pretending to be naive, but don't be fool to think that the Israel - Palestinian conflict is a nationalist or secular agenda, it's not and it's never was. It's highly religious matter and as you probably know the area surrounding Jerusalem is the holy land site for the three world's major religions namely Jewish, Christian and Islam, and the Jerusalem is mentioned specifically inside the Old Testament, New Testament and Quran, all originally in Semite based languages.
The root causes are religious and the solutions are also going to be religious based solutions, and those who think otherwise is either naive or in-denial, or both. There were already many many wars fought in the name of religions in Jerusalem, from David vs Goliath to subsequent Jewish wars with Persian and Roman, several hundreds years of Roman/Byzantine - Persian wars, several hundreds years of Crusades - Muslim wars, and now the Israel - Palestinian hundred years wars [1],[2],[3].
Fun facts, in the Quran Jewish people were mostly referred as Bani Israel (son of Israel or Yaakob/Jacob) not Yahudi as normally referred in the Arabic language, and both Cristians and Jewish together were referred as the People of the Books. The term 'Israel' is being used in the Quran more than thousands years ago, ironically it's being adopted by current Israel govt.
Another fun facts, most of the US Presidents (45) are descendants of the Eleanor of Aquitaine [4]. She's the Queen of France and later after her divorce, Queen of England. She's the mother of King Richard the Lionheart, the infamous Crusades King l, and also mother of King John Plantagenet. She's also the major sponsor and player of early Crusades [5].
> If you are direct descendants of the original Jews that have been living in the area for many centuries, I really hope that you and your family are safe from all the troubles.
That is an very problematic take. Some would might consider it racist.
Judia was here. That's a historic fact. Somehow you decided that the timeline for this being the "native country of a given people" is exactly in the right timeline to exclude the Jews. Like our right for the country has somehow elapsed because we experienced a genocide and didn't come back in time to reclaim our lost country...
Not that it matters but both me and my spouse were born in Israel as was the vast majority of this country. The claim that we're westerners is ludicrous and part of the typical anti-Israel propaganda.
My parents immigrated. My father escaped Morocco, my spouses father escaped Yemen. They both lost their homes as did 40% of the Jews who came to Israel from the east/south. Our mother's sides had vast families in Europe. Again a pretty common story...
> But if you're of the new recent Jewish immigrants to the promised land of Israel, I've really bad news for you. Personally I'd migrate elsewhere than accidently caught in the perpetual crossfire.
This sort of rhetoric is even more problematic. Many Jews are looking at people who say that and feel that Israel is our only home. This promotes Israeli nationalism and immigration to Israel.
Every time I'm in Europe and see the "pro-Palestine" demonstrators I'm thankful that I live in Israel. We might get rockets occasionally, but I feel safer walking the streets even if we have suicide bombers and shootings. At least we're together.
> I'm not sure whether you're naive or pretending to be naive, but don't be fool to think that the Israel - Palestinian conflict is a nationalist or secular agenda, it's not and it's never was.
I've been here for the past 50 years. I've had youth activities with Palestinian youths in the 80s and 90s. I know this very well.
I didn't hint in any waythat it's a secular conflict. It's 100% a religious conflict.
I said that Israel is mostly secular and had only one religious prime minister (for one year) and he had a Muslim party in his cabinet which was one of the most diverse in history.
That means that the religious problem that is at the root of the conflict is more to blame on the deeply religious element... Which is not Israel.
> It's highly religious matter and as you probably know the area surrounding Jerusalem is the holy land site for the three world's major religions namely Jewish, Christian and Islam, and the Jerusalem is mentioned specifically inside the Old Testament, New Testament and Quran, all originally in Semite based languages.
Are you seriously mansplaining my home country and its history to me?
> The term Israel was used in the Quran more than thousands it's being adopted by current Israel govt.
It's from the old testament, sons of Israel. I read the books.
roughly 5 hours ago [-]
So, first, noting from your other comments here that you're not getting to armchair this from the safety of abroad like the rest of us - I sincerely hope you and your family stay safe and can know peace. I'm putting a lot of words into what may seem like a defense of either Iran or its proxies - believe me when I say I'm aiming to explain, not justify. I'm a pacifist and a humanist, and my genuine hope is that people everywhere can live in peace and safety. I'll also say that if I say things like "Israel does X" or something, I'm not ascribing the actions or morals of the state to you personally - I live in America, I know the difference between the actions of a government and the opinions of its people (unless you've got Bibi's private number, in which case - get dialing, damn).
> So you're saying that there are motivations that would make you perform suicide bombings? There are incentives by which you would sacrifice your children? <...> If you think that the death of your child will send him on a fast track to heaven that can seriously impact the rational choices you make down the line.
If your people were under threat, would you sacrifice yourself to save them? If your children died fighting to protect your country (genuinely protect, not in the "US invades Iraq to protect our god-given right to drive giant trucks" sense), would you be proud of them? Do you think they'd go to heaven?
This is why I keep pressing on this: under what circumstances would you do the same things that they're doing? Start from the premise that you did, and work backwards - what would it take? Why would you do that? If you continue to act like these people are weird alterna-humans, you're going to keep getting surprised by their actions. Start from the premise that they're like you or broadly like the people you know, work your way back to why the hell they're doing the things that keep surprising you, and then figure out what's going to make them stop.
(As a separate note, the concept of martyrdom doesn't start in Islam - there's a rich history of it across all the Abrahamic religions, and all of them presume the martyr's getting the fast track to paradise.)
I'd say one other thing, which is that Hamas is a militant group which considers themselves under existential siege and behaves accordingly - Iran is a different entity under different constraints whose people (and leaders) make different choices. Words are words - I'd suspect we've both heard plenty of revolting things from our countrymen that we brush off as idle talk that the other side would take as a dire threat.
And, for what it's worth, I understand the paranoia. I don't think it's unjustified. I get why Israel does not want Iran to get a nuclear bomb. But I don't think the actions of Israel or the US here are making that outcome less likely, and I think they're taking those actions due to the kind of misreading of Iran that we're discussing here.
To flip this on its head: if you were Iran, what on earth would convince you not to build a bomb now?
invalidname 5 hours ago [-]
> I sincerely hope you and your family stay safe and can know peace.
Thanks and appreciated.
> my genuine hope is that people everywhere can live in peace and safety.
Same. Unfortunately, bad people do exist and pacifism is a luxury we can't afford.
> unless you've got Bibi's private number, in which case - get dialing, damn
We demonstrate a lot. Some in-front of his house. He's an a*hole megalomaniac that just doesn't care about anything. But I guess you have your own version of that...
> If your people were under threat, would you sacrifice yourself to save them?
Self sacrifice is very different to walking into a bus in the middle of Tel Aviv where you have children and other Muslims and blowing yourself up. Notice that people did it during the Oslo accord period, not for the purpose of "protecting their family". They did it to stop the peace process from happening and were successful.
The goal of Hamas is the exact opposite of what you describe. Their goal is to prevent peace with Israel. Oct 7th happened because they were afraid Israel would make a deal with Saudi Arabia which would lead to a Palestinian state. They don't want that, they want the whole country.
I'll also say that if I say things like "Israel does X" or something, I'm not ascribing the actions or morals of the state to you personally - I live in America, I know the difference between the actions of a government and the opinions of its people (unless you've got Bibi's private number, in which case - get dialing, damn).
> Do you think they'd go to heaven?
They believe that if a Palestinian child dies during the conflict they go to heaven. That essentially gives them a license to "sacrifice" children of other Palestinians as part of their holy war.
> This is why I keep pressing on this: under what circumstances would you do the same things that they're doing?
No. I'd compromise and build a country. That is what the majority of Palestinians want. That is why the Palestinian authority never joined Hamas's war against Israel.
> (As a separate note, the concept of martyrdom doesn't start in Islam - there's a rich history of it across all the Abrahamic religions, and all of them presume the martyr's getting the fast track to paradise.)
Sure. It's in the old testament I know. תמות נפשי עם פלישתים
Roughly translated: "My sole will die with the philistines" which is fitting. But we grew up as did the Christians who were also pretty crazy. The same is true for most Muslims, as I said... My kids study in school with Muslims. They are fine people. Hamas is a different breed.
> I'd say one other thing, which is that Hamas is a militant group which considers themselves under existential siege and behaves accordingly
That isn't true. They had the freedom to do whatever they wanted and made an explicit choice. Israel literally paid them billions in a failed attempt to make them more moderate.
They continue to make that choice by refusing the release of the 53 Israeli hostages which would end the war.
roughly 4 hours ago [-]
> But I guess you have your own version of that...
Indeed we do :-)
> That is why the Palestinian authority never joined Hamas's war against Israel.
The PA's reward for this is the settlers.
I think a basic problem for Israel here is that some relatively small percent of the population wants genocide, and they're the ones who've been driving the cart for the last decade or so.
What, to you, is the realistic road to a two-state solution?
With regards to the hostages - to an outside eye, Israel's bombing campaign doesn't really seem to indicate they're overly worried about the health and safety of those 53 remaining hostages.
invalidname 4 hours ago [-]
> The PA's reward for this is the settlers.
Yes. That should be the real outrage here.
The extreme-right fascists in the government are indeed using Oct 7th as an excuse to make the west-bank worse. I hope we can kick them out of office in the next election but the Iran thing shuffles the deck a bit and reduced some of the hate against Bibi.
> I think a basic problem for Israel here is that some relatively small percent of the population wants genocide, and they're the ones who've been driving the cart for the last decade or so.
I don't think they want Genocide. They look at the Palestinian extremists and say that they will never change. No matter what we try they will always try to kill us. So if it's us or them it should be us.
I get what they are saying. The fact that Palestinians voted for Hamas shocked us all back in the day. The problem is that Palestinians don't have stable leadership that we can talk to and trust. We also have pretty poor leaders since Rabin.
> What, to you, is the realistic road to a two-state solution?
I used to think there is no other option. That we might take a detour and get there eventually after all the pain since there's no other realistic option. Now I'm afraid that the Israeli extreme right might rise to power. The anti-Israel sentiment is actually fueling it which is pretty horrifying.
I hope calm voices will take the Saudi deal which can truly revolutionize the middle east. But right now I think we need to calm down. We've been in nonstop war since 2023 and it puts you in a fight or flight mode. People are picking up extreme stances as a result.
> With regards to the hostages - to an outside eye, Israel's bombing campaign doesn't really seem to indicate they're overly worried about the health and safety of those 53 remaining hostages.
Bibi doesn't want them back and Hamas don't want to release them. He knows that if they will be back he will have to end the war and then might lose his government. Now with the Iran campaign it might finally give him the incentive to close on a reasonable deal.
roughly 3 hours ago [-]
> I don't think they want Genocide. They look at the Palestinian extremists and say that they will never change. No matter what we try they will always try to kill us. So if it's us or them it should be us.
This is a bit of semantics, though - "if it's us or them it should be us" is advocating genocide (I'm not saying _you're_ advocating genocide, to be clear). I think this is one of the problems for Israeli society, especially post-Oct 7 - the only group with a coherent picture of what they want and how to get there is the extreme right, and they're pushing for genocide, no matter how they phrase or qualify it. The semantics and the nuance of the conversation inside Israeli society isn't making it to the outside world, but the actions of the right wing hardliners are - that's what the rest of the world is seeing and responding to (and, for what it's worth, I'd suspect there's similar conversations happening inside of Palestine, too).
> The fact that Palestinians voted for Hamas shocked us all back in the day.
There's a couple sides to this - one was that Fatah was viewed as broadly corrupt and ineffective, and Hamas was the opposition party. I understand why Israel saw that as a Palestinian vote for Israeli genocide, but there's a credible claim that it was closer to, say, a Turkish vote for Erdogan or an Indian vote for Modi.
The history of the Hamas government, especially in the early days, is an interesting one - the group made real signs that they were willing to de-escalate and move towards peace. There's a long history of the moment here: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/cobban-breakout-hamas-... - but long story short, neither Israel nor America were willing to take a chance, and, again, right-wingers in Israel took actions that closed that road off.
> The problem is that Palestinians don't have stable leadership that we can talk to and trust.
Yeah, this is definitely a credible complaint from the Israeli side - probably the last person who could've conceivably been that person was Yasser Arafat, and even the people who worked closely to negotiate with him noted that he was a militant to his dying days (which were 20 years ago).
Regarding the road to peace, I think this is something that Israel needs to invest in if there's hope of a genuine two-state solution - there needs to be efforts to build up Palestinian civil society and they need to show there's a credible reason for negotiating with Israel and genuine benefits to come from it, which I don't think Palestinians broadly believe right now.
> I hope calm voices will take the Saudi deal which can truly revolutionize the middle east. But right now I think we need to calm down. We've been in nonstop war since 2023 and it puts you in a fight or flight mode. People are picking up extreme stances as a result.
Yeah, this is going to be really hard to unwind - especially since I don't know what kind of committed partner for peace you're going to have on the other side of the Gaza wall going forward. The amount of despair visited on those people isn't creating fertile ground for the thawing of relations for the next generation or so.
Netanyahu has carved his name into the history of Israel at this point - I sincerely hope y'all can find a way forward towards peace.
2011 Attempted Assassination of Saudi Ambassador in Washington, D.C.
2019–2020 Attacks on U.S. Forces and Embassy in Iraq
Iranian Missile Strikes on U.S. Forces in Iraq (2020)
Here I'm ignoring most proxy action and ignoring the many attacks that targeted Israel.
I 100% agree context is important.
CapricornNoble 16 hours ago [-]
>The main damage they do to Israel is waking up Israelis due to a missile alarm. As a result they lose hundreds of lives in bombings and crucial resources. That doesn't deter them
Ansar Allah has managed to largely shut down the port of Eilat, one of only 3 major ports in Israel, and Israel relies on maritime imports to sustain itself.
They aren't detered by Israeli bombs because they've been bombed by the Saudis for over a decade in their ongoing civil war.
But all of this talk about nuclear bombs and jihad is hypothetical. Meanwhile only one country in the MidEast has an ACTUAL undeclared nuclear arsenal, and it's the country that has occupied territory in multiple neighboring countries while conducting an ethnic cleansing that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of women and children.
As a Westerner, I'd much rather we deal with the Rogue State perpetrators of actual crimes rather than the hypothetical criminals.
invalidname 16 hours ago [-]
> Ansar Allah has managed to largely shut down the port of Eilat, one of only 3 major ports in Israel, and Israel relies on maritime imports to sustain itself.
That was mostly due to the blockade, it doesn't justify the rockets. That mostly damages a private company and doesn't cost Israel much in the grand scheme of things considering Israel has 2 additional large ports.
> They aren't detered by Israeli bombs because they've been bombed by the Saudis for over a decade in their ongoing civil war.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Death of their own people doesn't fit into their equation.
> But all of this talk about nuclear bombs and jihad is hypothetical. Meanwhile only one country in the MidEast has an ACTUAL undeclared nuclear arsenal, and it's the country that has occupied territory in multiple neighboring countries while conducting an ethnic cleansing that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of women and children.
That mixes a lot of different things and is mostly false.
Unlike them Israel never called for an annihilation of a different state. It called for a regime change. It never made a threat related to nukes other than one idiotic member of parliament who said something stupid.
Israeli demonstrators never called for death to Iran and even now the targets in Iran focus on the people/infrastructure behind the nuclear program while Iran targeted many civilian areas.
The claim of ethnic cleansing is also false and shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation in Gaza. There are Israelis who are justifiably warning that Israel is headed in that direction, but it physically hasn't happened yet. There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll.
If you're such a believer in Islamic logic then please explain why Hamas is still holding 53 Israeli hostages?
That is Israels main excuse for the war, without them the war will be over. What is the logic behind that?
Hamas sees Israel as a western nation. It believes that without western support Israel will collapse. In that sense the western outrage over the violence in Gaza is fuel to Hamas, it gives them incentive to keep the violence going and encourages them to use children. It encourages them to hoard the aid sent by the west and produce a picture of starvation amongst their own people.
The Israeli right-wing also benefits from this. They know that if the west abandons support for Israel it will allow them to do whatever they want. They believe that no amount of compromise will ever satisfy Palestinian extremists and they encourage taking harder action against them to fuel a war.
These sorts of stances and misinformation in the west is contributing to more violence and Palestinian death.
unethical_ban 5 hours ago [-]
>The claim of ethnic cleansing is also false and shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation in Gaza. There are Israelis who are justifiably warning that Israel is headed in that direction, but it physically hasn't happened yet. There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll.
Oh wow. A floor of 50,000 dead, every city razed, barely any functioning infrastructure and a blockage on medical and food assistance.
Israel chooses this.
invalidname 5 hours ago [-]
How many of the 50,000 are indeed Hamas combatants?
Israel didn't start this war. Hamas started it and is keeping it going by refusing to release the 53 civilian hostages it is holding. They are hiding under the cities, under the hospitals and all over the region.
I think the Israeli right-wing took that Hamas bait and used that to commit far more violence than it should have. Hamas is using it to prop western outrage which it believes will bring down Israel. The Israeli right-wing is happy about western outrage because they believe it will force Israel into isolation and let them do whatever they want.
CapricornNoble 5 hours ago [-]
> That mostly damages a private company and doesn't cost Israel much in the grand scheme of things considering Israel has 2 additional large ports.
Is Israel conducting an ethnic cleansing? See my clarification below, but also YES.
>The claim of ethnic cleansing is also false and shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation in Gaza.
Well if we want to get technical, Israel is conducting a genocide, as ethnic cleansing is not precisely defined. Any rational human being can pull up the definition of genocide on the UN website and conclude for themselves by assessing each criteria, particularly #1 and #3. It's not complicated. https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
We see the stream of images of dead, maimed, and starving children. We have the first-hand accounts of western aid workers and doctors trying to save lives in Gaza, reporting anomalies that even veteran conflict doctors haven't seen before (such as disproportionate head and torso small arms wounds on children). And perhaps more importantly, we see and hear the things Israeli politicians say about Palestinians.
> There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll.
Why are you using passive language? Why are there civilian casualties? They don't just magically appear on their own. There would be no civilian casualties if Israel wasn't dropping bombs on peoples' homes. There would be no civilian casualties if the IDF wasn't ambushing convoys of first responders.
> If you're such a believer in Islamic logic then please explain why Hamas is still holding 53 Israeli hostages?
I will not allow you to deflect from the core issue at hand by pivoting the conversation to Hamas. The point is to compare and assess the two principle STATE ACTORS, one of which sits on a nuclear arsenal while massacring civilians, and one of which is on the receiving end of "preemptive strikes" while not possessing equivalent weapons.
> Hamas sees Israel as a western nation. It believes that without western support Israel will collapse.
Hamas isn't wrong, which is probably why Israel spends such a massive amount of treasure and effort on propaganda directed at western audiences. The Israeli air force would have been grounded months ago if not for a blank check to get fuel and ordnance from the US. Israel's jets drink more aviation fuel than Israel can ever refine itself.
> It encourages them to hoard the aid sent by the west and produce a picture of starvation amongst their own people.
Hamas aren't the ones intercepting aid shipments in international waters. Israel is.
Well... It isn't. It's a big port. We're doing perfectly fine and the shops are full.
> Does Israel have an undeclared nuclear arsenal? YES.
Probably. But assuming it does, did it ever threaten anyone with it even when it was under attack? Nope.
> Does Israel occupy territory in multiple neighboring countries? YES (in both Syria and Lebanon
Lebanon shot rockets into Israel for a year at an average of 10 rockets per day targeting civilian population killing children etc. They dug huge tunnels in an attempt to do a full out invasion/massacre on the north border. Israel responded "gently" at first. Gave them a year to back down.
Israel is there to protect the family members of Israeli Druzi minorities and make sure they aren't murdered by the new regime.
> Well if we want to get technical, Israel is conducting a genocide, as ethnic cleansing is not precisely defined.
> 1. Killing members of the group; - Israel doesn't satisfy that criteria. There is a war which Israel didn't start. It's targeting Hamas which is in a specific region still holding hostages. People don't die because they are Palestinians.
Yes, civilian casualties happen a lot and it's tragic. But that isn't genocide by even the most lax definition of that.
> 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Again, war isn't that.
But let me help you with the arguments. First there's the ethnic cleansing which essentially means displacement. Initially when Palestinians were cleared from the north there were fears that they won't be able to return home. Some right-wing extremists even advocated for that. However, they have since returned.
The second claim is about starvation which I agree is terrible. Unfortunately, it's not as clear cut. Israel did plenty of stupid/evil stuff in that regard (cutting water, electricity and holding aid trucks). These were indeed bad. But they got restored.
The logic they had was that this is stolen by Hamas and then resold on the black market to fund their operation. This is also 100% true. That's why Israel is trying a different way around Hamas to bring down the organization for good.
That's horrible, but so are the other guys.
> > There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll.
>
> Why are you using passive language?
Because I never killed anyone and always voted for peace. I didn't do this, Hamas did it. I feel terrible for Palestinians. I can (and do) demonstrate against my government, I hope they will get a deal to release the hostages and end this.
A Palestinian who tries to do the same thing in Gaza will find himself in a shallow grave and the people who will put him there are his own countrymen.
Ideally, if Israel had a decent government this war should have been about freeing Palestinians from the clutches of Hamas. But with the current government it's unfortunately just terrible.
> Why are there civilian casualties?
There always are in war.
But mostly because of you. Hamas believe that without western support Israel will collapse. So they are making the war as brutal as possible for their own populace in the hope of de-legitimizing Israel. The Israeli extreme right-wing is actually for it, they think that if western support is no longer an option then no one will hold them back from forcing Palestinians out of Gaza entirely.
> They don't just magically appear on their own.
In a war zone people don't carry flashy signs indicating their civilian status.
> There would be no civilian casualties if Israel wasn't dropping bombs on peoples' homes.
> There would be no civilian casualties if the IDF wasn't ambushing convoys of first responders.
There were several cases of Hamas using Ambulances to drive around and move troops. There were cases of mistaken identity by the IDF. It's horrible and that's exactly what Hamas wants.
> I will not allow you to deflect from the core issue at hand by pivoting the conversation to Hamas.
Why is that deflection?
You're pretending that Israel is there shooting civilians while ignoring the reason it's there to begin with.
> The point is to compare and assess the two principle STATE ACTORS, one of which sits on a nuclear arsenal while massacring civilians,
Again. Not murdering civilians, you have no concept of what war is.
> and one of which is on the receiving end of "preemptive strikes" while not possessing equivalent weapons.
They didn't receive a "preemptive strikes". They were the people behind the rise of Hezbolla in Lebanon who attacked Israel repeatedly. They funded the Huttis who attacked the Saudis and shipping. They blew up embassies and were behind countless terrorist action. They are the trigger, training and a major driver for the October 7th attacks.
Once they gain nuclear weapons it would be too late and WWIII will start. This strike was essential to prevent that.
> > Hamas sees Israel as a western nation. It believes that without western support Israel will collapse.
>
> Hamas isn't wrong, which is probably why Israel spends such a massive amount of treasure and effort on propaganda directed at western audiences.
Israel is one of the worlds largest manufacturers of weapons. Why?
Because we were under embargo before and it helped us build up our economy and technology. When we first got American aircrafts we had to strip that junk down and rebuild it. Thanks to us Americas aircrafts are now far better. Missile defense systems actually work.
An embargo will hurt Israel a lot. But would probably be far worse to the Palestinians.
> The Israeli air force would have been grounded months ago if not for a blank check to get fuel and ordnance from the US. Israel's jets drink more aviation fuel than Israel can ever refine itself.
If Israel can fly fewer missions it would just have to make every bombing count.
> Hamas aren't the ones intercepting aid shipments in international waters. Israel is.
The amount of aid in these flotillas is minuscule. They are for show only. Aid comes through trucks. Gaza has no port large enough for a ship, Biden tried to build one and failed.
These flotillas try to present the Israeli blockade as illegal. It isn't. Hamas is a threat and blockades are legal. Starvation tactics are illegal, but whether Israel is at fault here is debatable.
The problem I have with people like yourself is that you have a lot of criticism but no actual solutions. It's really easy to blame Israel, but what would you have Israel do exactly?
Go nicely and ask Hamas kindly to return the hostages? Stop firing rockets?
You say don't kill civilians, which school of urban warfare did you study in?
Give Palestinians a state: Israel tried it twice, arguably three times (leaving Gaza).
Leave Gaza: tried that before. That's how we got here.
dralley 19 hours ago [-]
86 year old fanatical Islamists don't necessarily operate on the same principles of game theory as the rest of us. Mutual self-destruction is not something they fear to the same degree.
roughly 19 hours ago [-]
And yet, for twenty goddamn years now, they’ve been negotiating with us and have _not_ built a nuclear weapon, despite repeated threats and provocations by the US. Iran is not an irrational actor. They are a state under siege by a superpower and its violent regional partners, and have acted in the fashion one would expect from a state in that position.
dralley 19 hours ago [-]
I mean, you're also forgetting the fact that Israel sends assassins after their top nuclear scientists every year or two, and cyberattacks every few years, and "mysterious accidents".
It's a bit like saying "but Y2K never happened, they must have been exaggerating" or "but nobody talks about the Ozone hole or acid rain anymore so it must have never been a real problem".
klipt 20 hours ago [-]
How much plausible deniability would Iran have if they gave a nuke to Hezbollah who fired it over the border at Tel Aviv?
"That was Hezbollah, not us!"
You might say using a proxy would be a hopelessly transparent ploy, but Hezbollah has been firing other Iranian supplied weapons at Israel for years and yet many people swear up and down that Iran has "never attacked Israel". So apparently the proxy ploy does work on a lot of people.
unethical_ban 5 hours ago [-]
Comparing the plausible deniability of a nuclear bomb to grenade launchers seems a stretch.
mgiampapa 20 hours ago [-]
They are a threat as a terrorist, not as a military force.
crystal_revenge 19 hours ago [-]
This is a statement that's fairly ignorant of Iran's long running military strategy. The military situation is much more complex and nuanced that you're laying it out.
One of Iran's strengths, for example, has always been lots of cheap missiles. People often point out how few of the missiles actually hit their targets in Israel, but that's missing the point: every intercepted missile costs orders of magnitude more to intercept than it does to create and launch. The Iron Dome is very effective, but is both incredibly expensive to run and, most importantly, loses efficacy over time as it's resources are depleted.
Nobody knows exactly how close Iran is to a nuclear weapon, but most analysts that I've read that the time to actually being able to launch a weapon is in terms of weeks. So part of Iran's strategy will always been draw attacks until it is ready to potentially retaliate.
On top of that, this is not a video game. Iran does not want to use a nuclear missile, nobody really does since it like ends, at least regionally, in everyone losing. Part of the balance of the conflict in the middle East in Iran is precisely not putting them in a potion where the use of nuclear weapons suddenly becomes rational. This is exactly why we in America have been nervous about open aggression towards Iran. Not because we might not win, but because it backs them into a corner where nuclear options suddenly become more rational.
> Because it is not liked the Iranian regime does not have any political options either.
Just one tiny example of how this is false: because of US sanctions China gets a enormous (estimated at around 15%) amount of their oil, very cheaply, from Iran. A serious threat to Iran then becomes a serious threat to Chinese oil supplies.
The issue is extremely complicated and nuanced, so any takes that are binary are missing a lot of information. By striking Iran we are pushing this this issue into places we haven't really explored yet, with consequences nobody truly knows.
invalidname 19 hours ago [-]
Exactly.
One of the main reasons for the Israeli attack was the mounting stockpile of missiles. Even the small fraction of conventional missiles that hit Israel created a great deal of damage. They were on route to create enough missiles and launchpads that would make Israels air defense irrelevant. The equivalent of two nuclear bombs.
timeon 17 hours ago [-]
> does not want to use a nuclear missile, nobody really does
One country already did.
tguvot 6 hours ago [-]
their IRBMs are rather unpleasant. and one of reasons for "all of it", it's that they decided to build 10k of them in order to have capacity to launch 1k at once
inquirerGeneral 21 hours ago [-]
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fallingknife 21 hours ago [-]
They're not going to escalate. They're already getting their ass handed to them by Israel and the last thing they want is to throw down with their other enemies in the region right now. You are correct that there will be no ground invasion, so there is no existential threat to the government. This means they have no incentive to do something stupid that will make anyone change their mind on that invasion.
handfuloflight 21 hours ago [-]
> so there is no existential threat to the government.
Do you think sitting by and doing nothing will not pose an existential threat to the government by way of constituent discontent?
TeeMassive 21 hours ago [-]
And now every regime who feared getting regime-changed will have an interest of developing the bomb. Gaddafi effect is real.
yonisto 20 hours ago [-]
This is a fanatic regime. I will have its people eating grass before giving up on anything.
TeeMassive 21 hours ago [-]
It's a country of 100M people. They're not just gonna be have their "ass handed to them", just like it didn't happen in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq1, Iraq2, Yemen and Afghanistan. Countries do adapt to bombings, especially when there's a superpower nearby.
Also if they "were just about to have the bomb" then they could develop it and use it after. So there is the conflicting position that they are both insane to use it and but both sane to not escalate the conflict. This is where most pro-war arguments fail the basic logic test in the nuclear bomb era.
abletonlive 20 hours ago [-]
"just like it didn't happen in korea, vietnam, iraq1, iraq2, yemen and afghanistan."
that's a fancy retelling of history you got there. MILLIONs died in those wars and less than 100K US troops died. Out of those wars, iraq 1 led to iraq defeat and withdrawal from kuwait. iraq 2 had saddam dragged through the streets and a regime change within 3 weeks, yemen was counterterrorism - there's no regime to topple, in afghanistan the taliban regime was removed for 20 years and only once the troops were withdrawn were they able to crawl back.
the current Iranian regime is over.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 20 hours ago [-]
Possibly, but the cost that regime being over is likely similar to that US paid with war in Afghanistan and Iraq, which, and I am being very, very charitable, was too much blood for too little gain.
Cyph0n 20 hours ago [-]
Forcing Iran into submission is not going be as easy as it was in Iraq.
One of the key reasons behind why Iraq fell so quickly is that Saddam made all the wrong moves leading up the invasion.
By that point, he had alienated every single potential ally (including Iran) - and virtually all states in the region were supportive of the invasion, regardless of their positions in public.
Not to mention that the invasion of Iraq was ultimately a failure anyways..
abletonlive 19 hours ago [-]
> By that point, he had alienated every single potential ally (including Iran)
It's so funny that you can't see the parallels
Cyph0n 19 hours ago [-]
Iran has been escalating reasonably, and is clearly acting as a sovereign state should. You can project all you want, but Saddam was playing another ballgame.
Unfortunately, international law means nothing these days, so it might have been a mistake to not establish deterrence sooner.
Regardless, Iran is not going to be as easy to topple as some people might think.
anigbrowl 19 hours ago [-]
You should talk. How much of a coalition do you think the US can assemble right now, after alienating numerous allies over the last 6 months?
abletonlive 12 hours ago [-]
Europe is now helping out in Ukraine a lot and buying thousands of Raytheon missiles to do so.
Come back to reality friend, nobody is alienated.
anigbrowl 20 minutes ago [-]
I'm not he one adrift from reality. Europe has always been helping out a lot, more than the US, because Ukraine has been politically aligned with the EU for well over a decade. It's the US that has been scaling back its involvement.
TeeMassive 20 hours ago [-]
KIAs ratio is not what determine a war's success
amanaplanacanal 20 hours ago [-]
So do you think the US is going to put the boots on the ground to make that happen? Even Trump isn't that stupid. Or maybe he is. I guess we'll see.
locallost 17 hours ago [-]
Short term I expect the people of Iran to unite around their hatred for the aggressor, making one of the proclaimed goals of "regime change" impossible.
bigyabai 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
21 hours ago [-]
anonnon 22 hours ago [-]
> Situation: 92,000,000 Iranians harbor a generational hatred for America
Is this supposed to make me feel comfortable about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons?
bigyabai 21 hours ago [-]
No, if you're familiar with Iranian history it should probably make you wary of interventionism with the goal of regime change. Create a power vacuum and you get the government you deserve, not the one you ask for.
Say, have you ever wondered how exactly Iran came to hate America so much?
smashah 21 hours ago [-]
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nozzlegear 21 hours ago [-]
> If you're uncomfortable, you should ask your congressAIPACSlave to nuke the entire planet. This way you can make sure there's nobody on this planet left to hate America's rape-culture-based Foreign Policy.
Referring to Congress as AIPAC slaves is textbook anti-Semitic rhetoric; it relies on the old conspiracy theory that Jews secretly control governments. Smuggling in bigotry like this undermines any chance at actual discussion we might have.
smashah 21 hours ago [-]
Israel is committing a holocaust of Gaza right now, the time for good faith discussion ended a while ago. Accusing anti-zionists of Anti-semetism for pointing out that the sky is blue as a way to protect Israel from scrutiny is manuscript double anti-semetism. One should be ashamed of oneself for trafficking in genocide whitewashing by using the real issue of antisemetism almost as a human shield.
nozzlegear 18 hours ago [-]
Spare me. Someone concerned about "double anti-semitism" wouldn't be making allusions to the "Jews control the government via AIPAC" trope, and in the same breath accuse that government of fostering a "rape-culture-based foreign policy."
smashah 6 hours ago [-]
What do idol worshipping zionist apostates have to do with Jews/Judaism? It's like claiming criticising ISIS sleeper cells is wholly islamophobic. Nazis do not represent all Christians, it's not christophobic to be anti nazi. It's not islamophobic to be anti ISIS. It's not antisemetic to be antizionist. It's not
Nobody is falling for this thought-ending rhetorical black hole trap anymore. Stop projecting your antisementism onto others. It's embarrassing.
juanani 21 hours ago [-]
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bigyabai 19 hours ago [-]
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renewiltord 21 hours ago [-]
No, mate, the joke is that they already hated us and now there's fewer of them. So this is what low SAT/GRE verbal looks like.
mikewarot 20 hours ago [-]
It's my suspicion that most of the 60% enriched material was moved prior to the attack(Edit: which recent statements from Iran seem to support), and now undergoing enrichment to 90% in a facility the US doesn't know about. Enrichment gets easier as the percentage goes up.
I expect (ok, I WORRY) a major US city to have a nuke set off in it by Iran within the next 5 years.
It didn't have to be this way, we had a working treaty and inspections regime until Trump pulled us out of it.
Decades of effort to prohibit nuclear proliferation have just gone down the toilet.
EDIT: Ya'll are right, the idea of them doing a test and going public makes a lot more sense.
roughly 20 hours ago [-]
> I expect a major US city to have a nuke set off in it by Iran within the next 5 years.
This absolutely will not happen. Iran will make a nuke, and they will test it very publicly, and then the political math in the Middle East changes overnight. The point of a nuclear bomb for a country like Iran (or Pakistan, or North Korea) is deterrence, not attack - if Iran set off a nuke in an American city, the regime would not survive, and it’s possible the country would not.
Edit: to put that differently, the only way an Iranian bomb goes off in an American city is if an American bomb goes off in an Iranian city.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
“ The point of a nuclear bomb for a country like Iran (or Pakistan, or North Korea) is deterrence”
I hope this is true, but Iran has a hard time convincing people because their theocratic elements are suicidal from a secular standpoint. Eg their religious messaging is confounding.
krainboltgreene 18 hours ago [-]
I think you have a typo, you wrote “Iran” instead of “the United States”.
hajile 9 hours ago [-]
This is where the logic stops.
If Iran is going to behave logically with a nuke, then why is it so terrible for them to have one? If they are illogical, then why would they NOT choose to wipe out Israel and blow up a couple major US cities?
The arguments I hear about Iran are almost completely contradictory.
invalidname 18 hours ago [-]
You are lumping together three very different countries into a western mindset of deterrence.
While Pakistan is Muslim they are not the same as Iran in any way. The current rulers of Iran do not operate by western logic and would be consider a "holy death" as a direct path to heaven.
Iranian populace isn't behind that, the people themselves are reasonably secular and aren't behind that. However, the leadership is dangerous and you should not assume they would use western logic.
r14c 20 hours ago [-]
I really don't understand why the US didn't continue their talks with Iran. They were clearly open to joining a non-proliferation treaty at the time. They also have a religious law against developing nukes in addition to their other tentative agreements and cooperation with IAEA.
I don't expect Iran to use any nukes that they develop though. Having nukes puts a country in a special diplomatic class. Using them is almost never beneficial. The status quo risks for nuclear programs is stronger sovereignty, which would drastically shift the regional balance of power and possibly tip the scales on a broad international level.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
I think Iran’s mercenaries eventually blew up the entire diplomatic strategy. It turns out they should have stop funding entities that shoot missiles at population centers so often. It was a reckless strategy that failed.
throwaway_dang 12 hours ago [-]
Because the the nuke thing is a ruse; Iran's economic relationship with China is the problem for the U.S. which wants global hegemony.
IAmGraydon 19 hours ago [-]
You are assuming they’re rational actors, and extremist religious ideologies are by their very nature irrational.
mdni007 18 hours ago [-]
Exactly, they should be rational just like our secular politicians.
"As a Christian growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, ‘Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.’ And from my perspective, I’d rather be on the blessing side of things.”
- Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator
"There is a reason the first time I shook Netanyahu's hand, I didn't wash it until I could touch the heads of my children."
- Randy Fine, a U.S. congressman
And of course, there's the President of the United States who's known to be completely rational.
all_factz 19 hours ago [-]
Iran has shown itself a rational actor time and time again by not escalating against continued provocation by Israel and the US, knowing that to do so would be to enter a conflict it can’t win. That’s not the behavior of an irrational actor who’s willing to fight whatever the cost, even total annihilation (which would be what happened if Iran nuked the US/Israel).
They may be religious fanatics, but they’re not idiots.
FergusArgyll 12 hours ago [-]
Iran FM saying no to negotiations on Friday was insane
Iran funded Hamas who did October 7th. That is the original escalation that kicked all this off. The region was (relatively) quiet until then.
all_factz 18 hours ago [-]
October 7th was a reaction to Trump’s “Abraham Accords” which benefitted Sunni countries at the expense of Iran.
margalabargala 9 hours ago [-]
And also a gigantic, gigantic escalation.
"You made a deal that disadvantages us so we're going to rape and murder a bunch of teenagers and kidnap people."
PeterHolzwarth 20 hours ago [-]
I don't think this makes much sense, due to the scale of the two parties: Iran somehow figuring out how to get a nuke onto a US city would invite complete and total annihilation of Iran -- and the world would largely support it. Iran knows this.
Nukes among peers aren't there to be used. They are there to immobilize and freeze a layer of conflict.
klipt 20 hours ago [-]
> I expect a major US city to have a nuke set off in it by Iran within the next 5 years.
Why would Iran do something so suicidal?
anonnon 7 hours ago [-]
> I expect (ok, I WORRY) a major US city to have a nuke set off in it by Iran within the next 5 years.
It's strange how this "Sum of All Fears" scenario is dismissed out of hand, or doesn't even occur, to the tankie-types on HN and reddit rooting for the Ayatollah to cross the nuclear finish line--the same Supreme Leader who, three days ago, permitted large protests in Tehran where crowds chanted "Death to America" and burned US flags.
Even weirder is that many (most?) of them are urban types who live, or aspire to live, in big cities like NYC or LA so they can enjoy the large LGBTQ communities, the ethnic restaurants, the bars serving craft IPAs, and the reduced commute times to and from protests. Hasan Piker, a prominent tankiefluencer, lives in LA, for example. So you would think they especially would have misgivings about Iran's enrichment program, even if they don't support intervention against it. And yet most of them dismiss any concern over it, or even outright state Iran should have nuclear weapons.
8note 2 hours ago [-]
as a sum of all fears, you should also be worrying much more that texas will drop a nuke in LA, and so the texas government needs to be wiped off the map, all texans included.
local terror attacks are already a constant and accepted danger
jimbob45 18 hours ago [-]
I had the same expectation myself but now everyone will be looking out for that type of attack.
IAmGraydon 19 hours ago [-]
Do you really think that they wouldn’t have done this by now if they could?
archsurface 22 hours ago [-]
Reversion to mean. Pre-78.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
I like this answer because of its circular logic (therefore impenetrable).
Simply declare a prior good state to be "the mean," then all we need to do is let mean reversion work its magic!
archsurface 21 hours ago [-]
I like this answer because you pretend you're arguing against the comment without actually addressing anything.
margalabargala 18 hours ago [-]
They addressed all substance in the comment though
archsurface 17 hours ago [-]
If only you had some.
margalabargala 9 hours ago [-]
I was just trying to be consistent with the comment chain. I wouldn't want to stick out.
archsurface 7 hours ago [-]
Are you five years old or retarded?
margalabargala 6 hours ago [-]
No, neither, so I guess I do unusually stick out in this comment thread...so much for that.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
andrepd 21 hours ago [-]
The dictatorship that was so hated that it led to a plurality of people supporting an Ayatollah?
21 hours ago [-]
seydor 17 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's going to end here. US wants to control Iran , to starve China of its oil. US+Israel already have set up rich middle east countries as bulwarks. The whole middle east is setting up the stage for future proxy wars between US & china/russia
Panoramix 12 hours ago [-]
I agree it's not going to end here, but I disagree on the reason. China doesn't rely on oil that much anymore as they have leaned heavily into nuclear and solar; further, Iran only provides about 12%.
v5v3 11 hours ago [-]
Starve China of its oil?
Wouldn't Russia or Venezuela take up the slack.
seydor 10 hours ago [-]
yep sure, not starve, but every piece of containment helps
v5v3 10 hours ago [-]
But if this happened, the price of oil would go up for everyone. As reducing supply increases demand for the remaining.
dgb23 15 hours ago [-]
But none of that is necessary. Why is the US suddenly so hostile towards China?
seydor 15 hours ago [-]
I think because China has very high growth momentum that surpasses american living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass american security standards too. China purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most west countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries ask for their help. That's why china's growth must be curbed, fast.
dudefeliciano 15 hours ago [-]
This is the biggest leopards ate my face moment. After decades of outsourcing to china and pandering to the chinese market for a quick buck, we are now surprised that they have become rich and decide their growth must be curbed. Honestly we in the west deserve everything that is coming to us
fastball 12 hours ago [-]
If the West lets it happen, sure. Still seems like there is some amount of time to reverse course and stop handing the future to China if the West so desires.
But democracies these days can't help but tie themselves in knots, so not holding my breath.
Davidzheng 7 hours ago [-]
I don't see how an answer that assumes hostility can be a helpful answer to why US to hostile. Would US also be equally hostile if France was surpassing US in all these ways?
padjo 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, they would. America is extremely insecure about not being number one and has a zero sum view of global politics.
inglor_cz 13 hours ago [-]
Chinese growth spurt is basically over already. Gone are the days when their economy grew by 10 per cent y/y, nowadays it is under 5. Still a respectable number, but the trend is going down.
Yours is an interesting conspiracy theory, though. Most people would say that this war is obviously about Israel.
tim333 12 hours ago [-]
Because China started threatening war. It's not really sudden. It's from Xi coming to power and saying he'll take Taiwan.
throwaway_dang 12 hours ago [-]
Because the U.S. wants global hegemony and time is against the U.S. so there is a rush to crush China sooner rather than later.
15 hours ago [-]
apu 17 hours ago [-]
Incredible to see the bloodlust and warmongering here, cloaked in the language of technical interest.
muzani 15 hours ago [-]
I find it incredibly sad. It tugs at a lot of old memories, as we've been talking about an Iran war since I was in college. Plenty of friends on both sides.
Bloodlust is one thing, but the dehumanization is just far worse. Maybe they go hand in hand - you can't want to see someone die unless you think of them as inhuman.
There's something about social media where it has been amplifying this dehumanization as well. So another layer of sadness where it feels like we could have, should have prevented this. Like an asteroid strike or a global pandemic, it feels like one of those things that should never happen until it does. I remember looking at 80000hours and thinking, nah... nuclear warfare will never happen, let's focus on AI.
petesergeant 12 hours ago [-]
You have plenty of friends who are supporters of the regime in Iran and its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, or just plenty of Iranian friends? Those feel like very distinct categories.
regularjack 1 hours ago [-]
I'm more scared of the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons than I am of Iran
Barrin92 8 hours ago [-]
>Those feel like very distinct categories.
They aren't. In the sense that, while a lot of Iranians are exasperated with their clerical elite under normal conditions and abscence of external threats, even domestic regime opponents tend to be very allergic to having their sovereignty destroyed by the US. Iraq should have been a lesson in that regard ("they'll greet us as liberators"), apparently it was not.
karmakurtisaani 16 hours ago [-]
But have you seen how cool the bunker buster bombs are? Like, how, incredible the engineering there is? It's going to be so awesome see those in action!
The same people would have drooled over the engineering of concentration camps. "Yeah it's sad there's some human casualties, but you have to appreciate the thought that went into it, and imagine doing that at that scale!"
nailer 9 hours ago [-]
How do you think destroying a nuclear engagement is similar to building a concentration camp?
soared 8 hours ago [-]
Both are violent war acts.
buangakun 16 hours ago [-]
As usual, the people who like war are the people who've never gone to war.
They cower behind their the comfort of their home, AC, keyboards, western paycheck and standards of living while trying to be (seen) as "rational" and "stoic".
They talk like there is good sides and bad sides in war, right sides and wrong sides.
Most of them are these small powerless men who dream of power fantasy.
I wonder, will today's children who is seeing this spectacles of war in 4K, all gore and guts and destruction, will grow up to be better leaders for all?
Or are they going to grow up just like their parents, small powerless trigger-happy men filled with mid-life crisis.
blakehawkins 16 hours ago [-]
False dichotomy final boss
omeid2 11 hours ago [-]
The new generation is far more anti war than the 90s hippies. The social media might have set society back on some fronts, but on some fronts, like cross-border understanding and humanisation, it has been a blessing.
nailer 9 hours ago [-]
The Iranian regime is a the bad side. I’m not sure how you would think otherwise. Speak to some Persians.
boxed 14 hours ago [-]
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11 hours ago [-]
pembrook 15 hours ago [-]
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vincnetas 15 hours ago [-]
counter argument GDP of Baltic states has gone up by hundreds percents since 1990. But we are now closer to war thanks to our "great" neighbor (russia) than ever before. By the way GDP going up has not saved Ukraine from war either. So i would not discard moral superiority so fast.
pembrook 15 hours ago [-]
Russia is a poor country and definitely does not have a western standard of living for the majority of the population.
vincnetas 9 hours ago [-]
It takes two to tango. same goes for war. Hence my remark about "moral superiority". By the way, russian GDP was also steadily increasing.
kubb 14 hours ago [-]
The US is at war all the time and has high GDP per capita.
pembrook 14 hours ago [-]
I also know a guy who drives drunk all the time and has never been in an accident.
Does that invalidate the fact that drunk driving leads to more road deaths?
kubb 14 hours ago [-]
It just a counterexample that helps me point out that your simplistic and unsupported claim should not be taken at face value.
There is a lot to be said about the practice of overusing the GDP metric, but in this case reminding everyone that the burden of proof is on you should be enough.
I don’t appreciate your analogy, and it strikes me as false.
pembrook 12 hours ago [-]
The point is outliers in a dataset do not negate a trend line. They are already included in the trend line.
kubb 12 hours ago [-]
You haven’t established that the trend line exists or is applicable in this context. I don’t expect you to admit this.
rizky05 15 hours ago [-]
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khazhoux 17 hours ago [-]
Why do you see it as bloodlust though?
If (if) this destroyed a nuclear weapons program, that is good for the world.
No one can predict the downstream consequences of today, but I fail to see an argument for why the world benefits from another nation getting the bomb.
WastedCucumber 15 hours ago [-]
I do see this as bloodlust as well.
I think the attacks aren't just about a nuclear weapons program. First, the program, according to US intelligence, does not exist. I'm inclined to believe them. [1] Second, unrelated infrastructure has been attacked, including energy infrastructure, hospitals, and state media.
All of that points not to the destruction of a nuclear weapons program, but of a country. The Israeli government claims to want regime change now... but that claim only came some time after the attacks started and there's no reason in that case to bomb hospitals. The Israeli government claimed the hospitals were "hiding" missle sites, but haven't presented any evidence of that, and have used that excuse many times before now, and were clearly lying.
Ah, plus the countries involved are engaged in a separate act of bloodlust at the moment. Which doesn't directly mean that the attacks against Iran are the same, but it certainly colors the picture.
Why do you take her testimony as gospel? As I understand it, the Israelis have infiltrated Iranian chain of command far more thoroughly than the US has. Maybe she didn't have all the info the Israelis had at the time? Maybe new information came to light? Maybe it was a diplomatic response attempting to get them to the bargaining table? Lots of possibilities here other than "the DNI testimony is was and will always be true"
I find it fairly suspicious to hear "Iran doesn't have a nuke program. Yes, they're enriching uranium to a point where it's only use is a nuclear weapon, but they have no plans to build a nuclear weapon"
karmakurtisaani 16 hours ago [-]
It's naive to think that is the question to think about here. Did you believe in Saddam's WMDs as well?
With less snark, this will only end peacefully as soon as possible with some diplomacy, or in a massive humanitarian disaster.
LAC-Tech 16 hours ago [-]
The only nation in the middle east with a nuclear weapons program is Israel. Why not destroy that one? It's objectively more of a threat to the region than Iran's.
JumpCrisscross 16 hours ago [-]
> only nation in the middle east with a nuclear weapons program is Israel. Why not destroy that one?
Put simply: they have it.
One of the unfair truths of nuclear geopolitics is the power asymmetry between nuclear and non-nuclear states. (And the collective interest of the former in nuclear NIMBYism.)
IncreasePosts 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, I guess if all of your neighbors want to kill Jews, then having Jews there is quite the threat!
LAC-Tech 2 hours ago [-]
The amount of jews killed by Israels neighbours is statistically insignificant compared to the amount of gentiles killed by Israel.
Jewish lives are not worth more than other peoples.
techpineapple 6 hours ago [-]
People have made the point that the world, relative to the time before the bomb, is a more peaceful place. So if a few countries having the bomb makes it peaceful, maybe more bombs make it more peaceful?
owebmaster 9 hours ago [-]
It's good for Iran enemies. The world is not one of Iran's enemy
einpoklum 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ACCount36 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nsingh2 16 hours ago [-]
Empathy for the Iranian people, whose budding democratic movement was crushed by the United States, for oil. The ones who are trying to fight for their own freedom from a repressive government, in the middle of this whole mess.
All these events risk spiraling the whole region into chaos, and creating another ISIS-like militancy, the brutality of which is going to be felt by the Iranians first and foremost.
tupac_speedrap 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jhanschoo 16 hours ago [-]
Internally theocratic countries can also be diplomatically reasonable when it comes to the use of arms. The measured retaliation against the unprovoked bombing of its Iranian consulate in Syria leads me to see that it is quite reasonable in its actions.
tim333 12 hours ago [-]
Won't someone please think of the precious nuclear enrichment facilities?
8 hours ago [-]
GuardianCaveman 17 hours ago [-]
Incredible to see the people who have zero contact with extremist Muslims or familiarity with what the Quran and hadiths actually say or understand Iran in any way talking about how Iran is the victim or burying their heads in the sand with their coexist bumper stickers acting like we can just be nice and everyone will get along.
viccis 17 hours ago [-]
>extremist Muslims or familiarity with what the Quran and hadiths
You can easily find stuff in the Bible and the Torah or Talmud that would shock you. And Israel even acts on the latter. But conveniently it's just the Muslim world, one beset with colonial extraction for centuries, that you care about. Not the people in the US who supported wars killings hundreds of thousands over the last few decades for religious reasons. Hmm.
EvgeniyZh 16 hours ago [-]
> the Muslim world, one beset with colonial extraction for centuries
Surely you mean on the side of extractors? The Ottoman Empire practiced mass movement of people (sürgün), basically settler colonialism; earlier Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates are among the largest empires in history, and their population was mass converted to Islam.
16 hours ago [-]
timeon 17 hours ago [-]
> acting like we can just be nice and everyone will get along
"We"? As far as I know US is not part of that region. Also I remember current president was campaigning on not starting wars. And yet here we are.
Aachen 9 hours ago [-]
With intercontinental weapons and shipping, we're sorta all part of every region. In Zeeland I'm literally as far from New Zealand as humanly possible, but if another SARS pops up there or a war breaks out there, it's very likely to affect me in some way
So I guess we're on the same anti-war side, but for opposite reasons?
adhamsalama 17 hours ago [-]
Bro just one more war in the middle east bro it'll be good this time bro they're terrorists bro just believe me bro
LAC-Tech 17 hours ago [-]
It feels disingenuous to talk of extremist muslims when we have extremist jews bombing 4 countries in 2 years, and committing a genocide.
Iran has killed a lot less civilians than Israel and it isn't even close. I'm much less worried about them getting the bomb than I am about the fact Israel already has it.
BartjeD 17 hours ago [-]
Bombing another country is literally a declaration of war. With explosions.
Isn't an act of congress required for this, in the US?
riffraff 17 hours ago [-]
Countries stopped doing declarations of war decades ago, cause you know, war is not something _we_ do, it's something bad people do.
_We_ do special operations, interventions, liberations, preventive strikes, weapon destructions.
karmakurtisaani 16 hours ago [-]
And then you make movies on how you were the good guys, and that's how we all will remember it.
whilenot-dev 15 hours ago [-]
I'm all for a collective change there, so every foreign movie just ends in the same deus ex machina moment: every protagonist gets bombed out of existence. Might get repetitive after a while, but I guess that's the idea.
jiggawatts 16 hours ago [-]
Also the enemy is always a guerrilla, terrorist, or a rebel and works for a regime, dictator, or king.
IceHegel 17 hours ago [-]
Any reasonable understanding of the term "war" obviously includes bombing a country's strategic military sites.
Today Congressmen's main job is soliciting bribes. I expect they want their name on as few pieces of paper connecting them to a conflict as possible. They are not in charge of the government.
GuardianCaveman 17 hours ago [-]
Obama bombed a lot of countries with no act of congress: Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, etc. I don’t know the legality but plenty of precedent besides him.
2001 seems like a long time ago, is that really the legal helmet here?
rocqua 15 hours ago [-]
Only a minor difference, but from what I know, those strikes were not against government targets?
ignoramous 17 hours ago [-]
> Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria ...
Interesting. Bombing Muslim-majority countries seems to be accepted exception?
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
By the body of American legislative tradition, no this is not an act of war. In fact, we haven't declared one since WWII.
BartjeD 14 hours ago [-]
If Mexico bombed area 51 with bunker busters and stealth planes, it would be interpreted as a declaration of war.
By anyone. The world over.
If you're seriously saying this isn't war, bombing Iran, you're just engaging in willfull self deception at this point.
zorobo 13 hours ago [-]
I don’t recall USA saying death to Mexico
BartjeD 13 hours ago [-]
So if we change the example to Canada, responding to threats of annexation, you'l engage on the point in substance?
zorobo 5 hours ago [-]
I didn't know the US envisions throwing Mexicans and Canadians to the sea (at best)
dunekid 13 hours ago [-]
Squint a bit harder and see if US toppled a democratically elected government in Mexico and installed a cruel dictator for oil? And shot down a civilian flight from Mexico? Maybe not.
Use of military force requires congressional approval.
Well, in principle. In practice, the US executive does not observe this restriction, or at most - makes a flimsy connection the 2001 AUMF following the twin towers attack. The courts do not enjoin it from using military force pretty much arbitraly; and congress does not impeach nor even adopt declarative denunciations of this behavior.
Refreeze5224 17 hours ago [-]
George Washington was the first president to take military action without congressional approval, so on the sense of precedent providing legality, it's quite an old concept.
alkonaut 14 hours ago [-]
Bombing government military infrastructure (not terrorist cells or similar) is as clear as it gets.
If this isn’t an act of war then nothing is. And that’s a terrifying thought because that means a single person can start a war without congressional approval. Even impeachment doesn’t help prevent war since it’s after the fact.
What happens if a president orders strikes on a friendly country? It could be due to dementia, narcissistic personality disorder, personal vendettas (hypothetically, in real life I trust the US wouldnt elect that kind of person).
BartjeD 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
WWII was the last time American declared war.
khazhoux 17 hours ago [-]
We were already at a declared war at that time.
BartjeD 16 hours ago [-]
The point being that under your definition, a thermo nucleair device also isnt a declaration of war.
Hence highlighting the completely schizofrenic bind this position entails.
Because no one would consider a nuke anything other than a war, and the same applies to these planes dropping these bombs.
ExoticPearTree 10 hours ago [-]
> Isn't an act of congress required for this, in the US?
Yes, but when only when you really need to go to a full wartime economy. Otherwise is just business as usual.
BLKNSLVR 17 hours ago [-]
The US, as rational thinking US citizens may have thought it to be, no longer exists.
In fact, it may never have actually existed.
lotyrin 17 hours ago [-]
Intelligent, rational, empathetic people need to realize that when they are doing theory of mind for others (and especially groups) they are projecting their own qualities where they do not exist.
khazhoux 17 hours ago [-]
That ship sailed decades ago, my friend.
blahyawnblah 17 hours ago [-]
No. The president is the commander in chief. I can't remember the president or the situation but a long time ago a president attacked and said "I'm sending the troops" then senate/congress had to approve it or troops would be stranded.
Anduia 15 hours ago [-]
You are thinking about Truman sending the troops to help South Korea. However, he had UN backing.
The War Powers Act of 1973 was approved literally to avoid it happening in the future.
abvdasker 4 hours ago [-]
I think if you're China the smart thing to do would be to immediately send Iran a couple nukes. Would put an end to the conflict pretty much immediately.
Sammi 3 hours ago [-]
That would not improve china's situation.
v5v3 11 hours ago [-]
I am confused.
Iran knew USA would come along one day, and they knew the max capability of the bombs they would drop.
So why did they not go a lot deeper/reinforce to a level where the b52 payloads cannot reach.
christophilus 10 hours ago [-]
How do we know they didn’t? I’d be surprised if this is actually one and done.
tasuki 6 hours ago [-]
Trump tweeted it, must be definitely true!
luckylion 8 hours ago [-]
The GBU-57A started service in 2011. Fordow was completed in 2006, Natanz somewhere before 2002, so there's a good chance they did not know that kind of bomb would be available.
While they could've said "let's just assume there will be something X times stronger than anything known", it would also have increase the price to build these facilities by a factor of X+Y.
I'm no expert, but I imagine once you have your centrifuges up and running, you don't want to continue setting of blasts nearby to add another sub-level to your plant.
kkarakk 10 hours ago [-]
pretty basic - they know they have no chance of hiding from the US. so they go plausibly in reach but outside of being casually bombed by missiles from israel.
the moment they go deep US will go after them hard.
herbst 16 hours ago [-]
> No increase in radiation levels have been detected, the UN's nuclear watchdog says
If true they failed to destroy the material (just like last time when the US brought chaos over the world by creating a war out of "they have bombs" lies)
If not true, did they actually try to make the world a more poisonous place?
zorobo 5 hours ago [-]
The material cannot be destroyed.
However, uranium hexafluoride is very heavy and won't go far.
Also, it reverts into a solid at ≤ 56 °C.
Finally, it has a very long half life, meaning it is not super radioactive.
JumpCrisscross 15 hours ago [-]
> If true they failed to destroy the material
Not true. Caverns can collapse without leaking enough into atmosphere to trigger detection. The simple answer is we don’t really know; we may not be able to know.
tim333 9 hours ago [-]
Of course enriched uranium itself can't really be destroyed that way. Even if things collapsed they could tunnel in there.
herbst 15 hours ago [-]
So most of us had luck then I guess. For now
gorgoiler 17 hours ago [-]
As I understand it, conventional explosives derive their destructive force from using chemical energy to vaporize material so quickly that it explodes forming a destructive shockwave.
With a kinetic energy impacted like the MOP bunker buster, does the material vaporize ahead of the munitions? Is the destructive shockwave the munition casing itself, or perhaps the vaporized breccia being pushed in front of it?
In some ways I imagine it like a nail being driven into the ground but my gut feeling is that, at such high impact energies, something more complicated is going on. For example, with small calibre ballistics you can have many kinds of terminal action: from square edged paper cutting rounds used to make clean holes in targets, to subsonic rounds transferring energy into a target, all the way up to supersonic rounds which drive a shock cone through a “soft” target to cause trauma.
So russia can not attack a nuclear facility in ukraine, but us can in iran ? What am I missing ?
zorobo 5 hours ago [-]
Ukraine has not been saying death to Russia for 40 years straight.
Ukraine did not sponsor terrorism in Russia and other countries.
Ukraine does not install and arm suppletive militia in other countries.
Ukraine does not physically eliminate opposition at home and abroad.
Ukraine does not hang homosexuals.
Ukraine does not have a supreme leader for life.
Etc.
mrs6969 3 hours ago [-]
When iraq attacked iran, the major funding came from us, about 5b dollar. Not to mention, all of these years iran has been sanctioned, and showed as a terror regime. İt is not like; us was doing nothing and iran was saying death to us out of nowhere…
So us has been funding the death of iran 40 years ago, and iran has no right to say anything about it? This is far more than supporting terrorism. This is supporting your neighboring country to attack you.
Rest of your arguments are irrelavant. Biggest ally of us is saudis, and they are doing pretty much everything iran does, in a highly totaliter regime. They kill opponent, hang homosexuals, have a supreme regime, yet us loves them.
I am just saying, there is bit of an inconsistency here.
Spivak 3 hours ago [-]
This argument basically boils down to "because I think they're bad" as being the differentiating factor. That's not a strong argument when every country has a rap sheet of horrible things they've done. Half the damn world has a legitimate moral claim to nuke the US into dust based on what we've done/continue to do
to them.
Trying to moralize actions that are simply in the strategic interest of the US and our allies will lead you nowhere. Ukraine could have a king and stoned the gays and we still would have backed them against Russia.
And it's quite amusing what you just confirmed with your own words what Russia isn't a genocidal fanatical society hellbent on eradicating everything they don't like.
15155 5 hours ago [-]
> nuclear facility in ukraine
Above-ground facilities containing highly radioactive actinide products, supplying power to nearby civilization, cooled using nearby waterways
> us can in iran
Deep underground enrichment facilities containing weakly radioactive uranium, hours away from population centers
jiggawatts 17 hours ago [-]
a) Russia plans to conquer Ukraine and use its resources. Nuclear power plants are very expensive and critical to industry. Russia wants to capture these for their own use, not blow them up and irradiate the countryside that they wish to be a part of their own country!
b) Active reactors contain very "hot" decay products that are very bad for your health if atomised by an explosion and spread around. Chernobyl is the prototypical example of this. Enriched Uranium is less radioactive than natural Uranium, that's the point! Natural Uranium would "trigger itself" prematurely due to its constant background decay radiation.
mrs6969 6 hours ago [-]
So if russia do not want it as part of their country, and if it was not that level of radioactive, that would justify such attack ?
So, attacking a nuclear facility is valid if they are not that radioactive (since you are attacking you are not planning to use it anyway)
Did I get your answer correctly ?
tgv 10 hours ago [-]
My knowledge in these matters is limited, but natural uranium can't trigger itself, can it? At least, it can't produce the classical chain reaction, as there's not enough U235 to sustain it, I think.
aaronmdjones 9 hours ago [-]
> but natural uranium can't trigger itself, can it?
> Enriched Uranium is less radioactive than natural Uranium
[citation needed]
bufferoverflow 20 hours ago [-]
[dead]
adonese 6 hours ago [-]
Not sure how that plays out with international law. It started to feel more like guidelines and less of rules. I get that it has always been the case, but this feels like the final straw.
4 hours ago [-]
greenavocado 21 hours ago [-]
Fascinating how this happened merely weeks after Iran-China railway link opened (Reported on May 25, 2025. Link below.). It directly threatens US hegemony by providing a faster and more secure land corridor for trade, particularly Iranian oil and gas exports to China and Chinese goods flowing into Iran and the broader Middle East. This bypasses critical maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca, where the US Navy traditionally exerts significant control, reducing reliance on these US-dominated sea routes. Furthermore, the railway facilitates sanctioned Iranian oil exports to China and enables increased Chinese investment in Iran, undermining the effectiveness of US economic sanctions as a primary tool of foreign policy. It accelerates Eurasian integration under China's Belt and Road Initiative, deepening economic and strategic ties across the continent and fostering the development of a US-independent economic bloc linking China, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia, and Russia. The railway physically connects two major US adversaries, China and Iran, enabling easier movement of goods, resources, and potentially military or logistical support, thereby strengthening an anti-Western coalition challenging US global dominance. In essence, the railway erodes US control over trade routes, weakens sanctions, empowers a rival Eurasian bloc centered on China, and solidifies an opposing strategic axis.
Possibly trivial additional point is that the oil traded between Iran and China using Chinese currency, not the US dollar.
twelve40 20 hours ago [-]
doubt it's really game-changing. Rail is more expensive and the three other countries in the middle can be strong-armed and harassed into stalling or cutting this off.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 20 hours ago [-]
Depends, cutting off strait of hormuz could easily change that calculus a bit. Things can get unpredictable from here on now.
twelve40 16 hours ago [-]
from what i read, the Strait of Hormuz is mostly used for shipping to Asia now, with the US being a net exporter of oil, KSA and others getting more options to ship via the Red Sea instead, and overall blocking this would be a minor annoyance, not lasting long with 2 carrier strike groups on the way, and most to-be-blocked shipments going to China - shooting themselves in the foot. It seems the historical memories of the 70's mideast oil beef are just that. But what do i know.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 16 hours ago [-]
Futures do not disagree with you atm.
csomar 19 hours ago [-]
Afghanistan? Probably not. The other two are bordering China. I highly doubt they'll bow to the US instead.
twelve40 17 hours ago [-]
I don't think it's going through Afghanistan. It's probably just re-using Soviet railroads. But it is going through Turkmenistan, which is one of the craziest insane and most bizarre and unpredictable places one can think of, and Uzbekistan, which used to happily host US troops in Khanabad. Just a matter of some cash and some threats of sanctions with either one of those two.
nebula8804 19 hours ago [-]
Belt & Road continues to fray as China shows reluctance to help its partners when in need. China seems to only come to the aid of anyone after embarrassment or pressure or if it directly helps them. I'm reminded a few years back when Pakistan was suffering from terrible floods, China initially sent its very best thoughts and prayers but it wasn't until after the US started to send aid that China finally got involved. Ultimately all packages from the US seemed to have exceeded the Chinese total but I am unsure. If countries can get away by playing both the US and China off of each other great, but if you need help just from China, good luck.
stackedinserter 19 hours ago [-]
> more secure land corridor for trade, particularly Iranian oil and gas exports to China
It will require absurd number of trains that will run empty 1/2 of the time (unless you'll find a way to pack "Chinese goods" into tank cars)
21 hours ago [-]
ianks 11 hours ago [-]
No one in their right mind wants the Supreme Leader armed with nukes… but there are many ways to prevent this outcome.
croes 7 hours ago [-]
Would it change much if Iran had nukes?
Israel has nukes too so as soon Iran bombs Israel they strike back, not to mention the US reaction.
MAD would lead to a stalemate
grumple 6 hours ago [-]
Iran believes in martyrdom, which absolutely changes the reasoning. They would destroy Israel in a heartbeat even if it meant losing 90% of their population.
nsingh2 4 hours ago [-]
> Iran believes in martyrdom
Don't confuse religious rhetoric with actual state behavior.
In Iran’s case the highest religious authority has repeatedly issued a fatwa declaring the use of nuclear weapons forbidden.
Pakistan’s army motto invokes jihad, yet it has treated its arsenal as a shield against invasion so far, not a ticket to paradise.
Israel’s so-called Samson Option evokes a biblical suicide attack, but I doubt they'll use nukes for anything but deterrent.
North Korean propaganda urges citizens to die for the Leader, and I'm sure there are other nations I've not listed who's dominant religions have some sort of martyrdom idea, which use nukes as deterrents.
Look at political interests, command structures, and the costs of escalation, not whether a nation honors death in battle (which one doesn't?)
Aachen 9 hours ago [-]
I first read this as referring to Trump but I can't quite place the rest of the comment. Do you mean whoever is in charge of Iran or is it a way of saying both/either?
TurboTveit 8 hours ago [-]
It is the official title for the head of state in Iran.
luckylion 8 hours ago [-]
Supreme Leader (officially Supreme Leadership Authority) is the head of state of Iran, combining both political and religious ultimate power, appointed for life.
pythonic_hell 13 hours ago [-]
It’s sad to see how Europe leaders are reacting to this and further show how Europe is a vassal state to the US in all but name.
Europe is going to have to pick up the tab for the inevitable refugee and migrant crisis that will result from a wider war in the region - which they won’t be able to afford thanks to Trumps 5% military spending demand.
Imagine what it means for Europe if a fraction of 90 million people (5 times larger than Syria) suddenly find themselves in a situation that would necessitate fleeing for survival.
tim333 9 hours ago [-]
How are Europe's leaders reacting to this? I'm not sure the rest of the world can do much except watch.
Bluestein 11 hours ago [-]
Another bunch of smoking craters, another sovereign warning shot. Iran’s nuclear facilities go up in flames yet again, and the script rolls on—same actors, same lines.-
The elite nuclear club, forged in fire and sealed with hypocrisy, has made its position unmistakably clear: if you're not already in, you're never getting in. The path to national security does not run through treaties or IAEA inspections — it runs through enrichment, warheads, and the credible threat of annihilation. The lesson from history is as brutal as it is consistent: Those who gave up their deterrents — Saddam, Gaddafi, Ukraine — earned their place not at the table, but under the table.-
Non-proliferation, once wrapped in the language of peace and stability, now reads more like a cartel agreement. An exclusive arrangement to ensure the existing shareholders retain total dominance over the levers of this existential power. Meanwhile, aspiring states are lectured on restraint while having their infrastructure surgically removed via high explosives, or worse, sanctioned into collapse.-
It’s not deterrence anymore. It’s deterrence for some. The rest? They’re told to disarm and die quietly. Welcome to the age of managed apocalypse — where those with the bomb hold the moral high ground by sheer altitude, and everyone else is collateral in the performance of global order.-
sterlind 3 hours ago [-]
the IR-6 centrifuges are each the size of scuba tanks, and they double as little storage tanks. you can stuff several centrifuges full of 60% heu in a shed. Iran will have squirreled some away in dozens of sites. to resume enrichment they can connect a much smaller cascade than they needed back when they were at 3.62%.
plus they can actually make bombs even with 60% heu, they just have to be fatter and use more energetic explosives.
the time to have bombed Iran's nuclear program would have been months ago. or to have, you know, kept the original nuclear deal.
22 hours ago [-]
sepisoad 7 hours ago [-]
As Iranians, we are exhausted and frustrated with the Islamic regime in Iran, which has proven to be more destructive than any weapon. Despite numerous attempts to peacefully change the regime, each effort has been met with brutal violence, mass killings of civilians, and imprisonment of anyone who dares to oppose them. Over time, we’ve realized that protests alone cannot overthrow this regime; it requires a force stronger than them to bring about change. Now, after 45 years, Israel’s strikes on the regime’s key figures and military installations have given us a glimmer of hope. When my non-Iranian friends ask how I feel, I tell them I’m overjoyed—this is something we’ve dreamed of for decades. War is not ideal, but in a far-from-perfect world, it can sometimes prevent greater harm. This conflict is doing just that by challenging a regime that promotes a toxic ideology, one that disregards human life and thrives on death and destruction to achieve its goals.
While many Iranians feel hopeful that this could pave the way for real change, it’s disheartening to see left-leaning activists worldwide aligning with apologists for the mullahs’ regime, chanting “Stop the war.” This is deeply troubling. Where were they during the past 45 years when the regime slaughtered thousands, forced countless people into exile, oppressed women and minorities, executed LGBTQ individuals, and held Western travelers hostage to extort foreign governments?
To those who believe they’re doing good by opposing this war, you are, at best, a useful idiot supporting the mullahs’ regime. You cannot fathom the consequences if this conflict ends without decisively weakening them—Iran’s people would face an even darker era.
I’m not here to glorify Netanyahu or Trump, but their actions have achieved something we’ve long hoped for. My hope is that this leads to the complete dismantling of the regime and its proxies.
tim333 7 hours ago [-]
I was thinking this could actually be a moment of hope for the world with Iran and Russia both wobbly it could be the fall of a good chunk of the world's murderous dictatorships.
nsingh2 4 hours ago [-]
Judging by history, external forces toppling a regime through violence usually leads to instability, with the result being militancy.
I hope if this does happen in Iran, the day after involves a movement towards a secular and free government. But I have my doubts, especially considering a government led by a dictator tends to be easier to control, so external powers may lean towards that option if given the choice.
swat535 6 hours ago [-]
As another Iranian, I don't think you would have taken this stance and supporting the actions of Israel and United States if you knew the history and the aftermath of IRAN-IRAQ war.
I'm fairly against this and most of my friends where I live think I’m with the Mullahs. It’s not a questions of who’s bad or good. It all comes down to the fact that a foreign government and military attacked our LAND.
History repeats itself and shows patterns. Look at the patterns. Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many then thought USA will bring democracy and freedom and economic benefits and relief. But what ended up happening is hundreds of thousands of innocents died, millions were displaced, and all the infrastructure was bombed and those countries were set back 50 years. And all western oil companies took over the oil fields of that country.
Netanyahu and the Zionists have been saying Iran is a couple months away from a nuclear weapon for 25 years now. All lies. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. While Israel illegally has nuclear weapons themselves and don’t disclose their nuclear program or allow inspections. Iran signed the non proliferation treaty and Israel to this day has not signed it. Even all western experts and analysts say they Iran does not have nuclear weapons or a plan to build one. Tulsi Gabbard, the US national security advisor said a couple months ago that Iran has no nuclear weapons or plans to make a weapon.
They attacked us first and when Iran retaliates they say Israel has a right to defend itself. It’s hypocrisy in broad daylight.
Using the nuclear enrichment and weapons is a decoy and a false premise. Netanyahu has wanted to topple Iran and invade since 2000. There’s videos of him saying it in congress. He specifically named Iraq, Syria, Lybia and Iran. They got 3 out of the 4 and now they wanna come for Iran.
You’d be naive and blind to think Israeli army or Americans won’t target civilians. They would bomb all universities, airports, bridges, railroads, ports, electric and oil fields and anything they want. Look at what they did in Iraq, Syria, Lybia and gaza. What makes you think they won’t do the same in Iran?
On top of all that the scary thing is Iran has a lot of enemies in the region. Many countries want to see Iran fall. And Iran unfortunately has a lot of separatist traitors. This would create a power vacuum and civil war and anarchy. If we want revolution it must be for the people and by the people, not outside intervention. If you have issues with your family and hate them, you wouldn’t side with your family’s enemy, even though you might hate them…
We’re the nation of Cyrus the great, Darius, Xerxes, Nader shah, Reza shah, Ferdowsi….Where is your pride and honor? We’re 90 million strong and 75 times larger than Israel. Our ancestors would turn in their grave if they saw the Iranians that side with enemy and are so naive to think they want the best for us. Why would they spend billion of dollars and fight for me and you? Thinkkkk
If you’re asking why Iran won’t negotiate. Iran was negotiating. Negotiations don’t take just one day. Even during the nuclear deal in 2015 signed with Obama administration it took them 3-4 years. A deal which the US ripped apart and left under Trumps first term.
A 6th session of negotiations was set for Sunday June 15th, but Israel attacked Iran on June 12. Sabotaging any negotiations and they killed all out top nuclear scientists and chief negotiators. What does that signal? They don’t want negotiation it was all lies all along. Even Trump was saying negotiations was going well a couple days before June 15th and suddenly they attacked. They cannot be trusted.
We have no one but ourselves. All these western democracies that scream and champion for human rights and freedom are silent and won’t help us. They don’t care about us. Believe me they don’t. They sell weapons to Israel and they sold weapons to Iraq in 1980s. The same countries that coward and traitor Iranians side with are the ones selling weapons to Israel. Our beloved brothers and sisters are dying and getting wounded with the weapons these champions of democracy and human rights (USA, Germany, France, UK….) give Israel. They’re all hypocrites. They will set us back 50 years or more by targeting highways, airports, universities and hospitals and all infrastructure. They turned a blind eye when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and helped Iraq and they’re doing the same with Israel’s invasion. They never wanted to see a strong Iran through history. They ousted the Shah and left him too.
Even Reza Shah or his son would not bow down to this or surrender to any foreign government. Have some pride and honor and remember your 3000 year old history and culture. They’d wipe away our nationality and history.
Those who side with and help the enemy of our motherland and nation just because they’re against the current government would sell their soul, family and own countrymen too. They have no soul, honor or integrity.
zorobo 5 hours ago [-]
Israel is not interested in an invasion of Iran. What would be the benefit?
They are seeking security from the Iran government that has a record of supporting terrorism and calling for their death.
Now a if a regime change is in the cards, it is in the hands of the Iranian people.
kyo_gisors 5 hours ago [-]
Well I'm convinced, thanks GPT slop.
NalNezumi 9 hours ago [-]
One thing about this situation is that makes me reassess my impression of "deep state / military industrial complex".
Both Trump and Tulsi Gabbard (pre election) was running a "no war" platform with heavy connotation of "deep state" and wars only serving special interests (including Israel). My impression was that this outsider aspect really bought many libertarian and non-hawk republicans vote.
Hell, Gabbard was even branded Russian parrot after trying to talk to Assad, running as an independent after that. She even disagreed about this strike not even 3 months ago, 1 month ago and few days ago, with Trump.
But now they support it. They all just lied during election is the most probable reason but at least Gabbard have been saying same thing since 2016 election, 8 years, and all it took was Israel striking to go "aight let's go".
Is there just some information available to high official positions that makes you turn 180 on your opinion as soon as you get access to it, or what.
nsingh2 4 hours ago [-]
US foreign policy is uniparty: anti-war candidates enter office, face pre-existing security briefs, donors, contracts, and pro-Israel politics, and align with the existing consensus.
Much of the money fueling election campaigns flows from entrenched defense contractors, lobbyists, and think tanks. That momentum has more predictive power than what the current "Commander-in-chief" claims they'll do.
Campaign rhetoric may change, but policy is harder, and this is another reason to believe that US democracy is a veneer.
soared 8 hours ago [-]
Seemingly a public facing opinion is not some deeply held belief for your platform, but simply a means to an end (IE votes from libertarians). Actual short term and long term objectives mean making decisions that go against your publicly stated stances - a political risk that could alienate your base, but clearly not impacted by the fact that you’ve claimed the opposite for many years.
tim333 7 hours ago [-]
Voter polls?
wslh 9 hours ago [-]
From a game-theoretical perspective, the key question is whether Iran was actually developing a bomb with the intention to use it, rather than adhering to the Cold War logic of deterrence. Most people seem to assume the latter, but the former was also a plausible possibility.
batmaniam 19 hours ago [-]
How the heck does a US president have military powers so powerful and broad? If congress can only declare war, it doesn't make sense to me that the president can put the entire country at risk of war by directly bombing another country. Like then at that point, congress has to approve right..? Because the damage is already done. It's a big slap on the face at the global stage, with no room for political face-saving. The damage being already done to both global reputation and national sovereignty. There's no going back.
If another country bombed the US, and then their system of government was like, "oh well it isn't technically war cause it was just our single head honcho making his own decision. But good news, our second government entity officially declared not going to war with you, kthxbye srry lol", that logic isn't going to fly in the US. The US is gonna retaliate and consider it an act of war, because it was bombed by a foreign power... damage being already done.
How the heck can Trump do this. I get it if the US got attacked, then it's useless to wait for congress to decide war-or-not-war... but this literally puts the US on a direct war path with Iran. the US literally just bombed another country unprovoked.
And Trump said he hated war, which was his platform when running. He was gonna end the war in Ukraine because nobody wins and war is nasty. What is going on.. why is Congress so spineless too. They probably won't even do anything. This is the worst timeline ever.
cryptonector 17 hours ago [-]
> How the heck does a US president have military powers so powerful and broad? If congress can only declare war [...]
It's been this way since the Vietnam war, it not the Korean war. Every president since then has been able to engage in relatively small military operations without congressional approval. And the UN is what ended formal declarations of war, too. Basically Congress can stop military actions started by the President by taking the money away or not providing it to begin with, but if the operation is small then it's a fait accompli before Congress can do anything about it.
See the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Libya, Syria, etc.
BLKNSLVR 17 hours ago [-]
Israel declared war on Iran, and now the US has joined Israel's side in it.
There is no other interpretation when bombs and missiles are sent 'in anger' to a sovereign nation, no matter which side is "bad".
Hint: all sides are bad.
erikerikson 11 hours ago [-]
Sides are a distraction.
Violence and conflict creators and propagators are bad.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
In America, there's nothing unusual here: Presidents can, and very frequently have, decided to do military strikes on targets. This is not illegal in American law.
wsatb 18 hours ago [-]
> And Trump said he hated war, which was his platform when running. What’s going on..
He’s a career con artist, that’s what’s going on.
selivanovp 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
buyucu 12 hours ago [-]
If this doesn't convince Iran to make nuclear bombs, nothing will.
ngruhn 3 hours ago [-]
They were already convinced. That's why they're getting bombed.
22 hours ago [-]
jtfrench 14 hours ago [-]
Bodes well this does not.
12 hours ago [-]
LAC-Tech 17 hours ago [-]
I can't help but conclude the primary rogue state in region is not Iran - it's Israel:
- Did not sign the non-proliferation treaty
- Does not allow IAEA inspectors into their country
- Nuclear weapons program widely believed to have started from material stolen from the US
- Prime Minister wanted by the ICC for war crimes.
Since 2023, they have:
- Invaded and occupied parts of Syria and Lebanon
- Bombed Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen
- Killed nearly 70,000 people in Gaza
The Islamic Republic of Iran appears sane, rational, and peaceful by comparison. Quite an achievement!
dudefeliciano 14 hours ago [-]
even more so, future humans may see Iran as one of the only moral states for doing "something" against Israel
vbezhenar 16 hours ago [-]
US will sell their mother to a devil if that makes good profit. Who cares about Gaza people?
jampekka 14 hours ago [-]
US support for Israel isn't even about profit. It's about corruption.
tim333 7 hours ago [-]
A lot of them actually are influenced by the bible.
6 hours ago [-]
curiousgal 16 hours ago [-]
I am absolutely flabbergasted that very few are pointing this out. People seem to rally against Iran because of some hypothetical scenario where it could become...exactly like Israel.
TiredOfLife 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
LAC-Tech 13 hours ago [-]
How far back do we want to go? We could go back to 1948 when the precursor to the IDF poisoned the wells of the Arab villages they captured, so if the Arabs returned they'd get typhoid.
You put an arbitrary cutoff date in 2023. But going back to 1948 allows your opponents to add the Iran-Iraq wars (which Iran could have ended; "Estimates of total casualties range from 1,000,000 to twice that number."), and of course the creation of Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the continuous, violent suppression of Iranians.
Iran is by no means a sane country, not even compared to present-day Israel.
Nathanba 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
LAC-Tech 12 hours ago [-]
5 jews killed. If Israel could cut back their daily killing of gentiles to 5 a day, that would be a massive improvement.
twixfel 11 hours ago [-]
Israel was a mistake, easily one of the biggest foreign policy blunders of the 20th century. Look at everything that has followed from its creation. It is breathtaking how much Europe and America chooses to suffer for this small colonial outpost. We need a spine here in the West, we need to cut these lunatics adrift.
dkjaudyeqooe 21 hours ago [-]
There are reasons why presidents have avoided attacking Iran.
- massive instability in the ME. Just a few men with shoulder fired missiles can disrupt oil shipments from the biggest oil producers
- the high chance of being sucked into a forever war. Iran can cause a lot of problems with limited resources and can rebuild. They have no reason to give up and the US might have to continue bombing indefinitely, or launch a ground invasion.
- the increased chance of nuclear war in the ME. This action assumes that Iran has no backup facilities, or will never have, to continue building a bomb. Having already suffered the consequences, Iran has no reason not to seek a bomb.
austin-cheney 21 hours ago [-]
Worse, is that this was done at the behest of Israel. Israel is America’s shittiest ally in the region where the relationship is exclusively one-sided. There are good reasons why, despite all the lies and bullshit from America politicians, America has not executed military actions at their behest before now.
jordanb 20 hours ago [-]
“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”
— John Sheehan, S.J.
woah 18 hours ago [-]
Before Israel, the middle east was controlled by Great Britain
snickerbockers 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah but only on a temporary basis as they had to promise independence to the Arab tribes for their support against the Ottomans. Which brings us to the land of Palestine, which they actually promised exclusive dominion over to both the Jews and the Arabs. And that brings us full circle to the true shittiest ally America has in the middle east, "Great" Britain
coffeemug 19 hours ago [-]
Thomas Jefferson sent the U.S. navy to fight the Barbary war (in modern Libya) because he refused to pay tribute to protect our trading routes. This quote is simply false. We've had enemies in the Middle East pretty much since the founding of the American republic.
margalabargala 18 hours ago [-]
Where do you think Libya is?
Libya is nowhere near the Middle East. It's not even the Near East. It's in northern Africa.
jordanb 19 hours ago [-]
1) Libya is not in the middle east.
2) This was before our war with Canada and just after our Quasi-war with France.
nullhole 19 hours ago [-]
> “Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.” — John Sheehan, S.J.
Before Israel? Like before 1947? When half the place was under British rule and the oil industry was a fraction of what it was today?
That's about as useful as saying that before the atomic bomb, we had no enemies in the Middle East.
What a dishonest way to make such an inflammatory accusation.
CapricornNoble 18 hours ago [-]
Yes, before 1947, back when the Secretary of State as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all seasoned professionals who had just won WW2, strongly advised AGAINST supporting Zionism in Palestine. They correctly asserted that demands from the Zionists would never end, and that it would sour the US's otherwise solid relations with the entire Arab region.
Yes. Before Israel, when America had no enemies in the mideast. Thanks for confirming.
fastball 18 hours ago [-]
Who did have enemies in the ME? It was (as stated) mostly a vassal state.
cloverich 19 hours ago [-]
Oil rose to prominence during this same period; Israel is a major factor but is certainly not the only or even most important issue.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
It wasn’t, the political pressure from Iran’s neighbors was higher, and it didn’t help that the EU was pissed at Iran for helping kill Ukraine.
dkjaudyeqooe 21 hours ago [-]
This is probably the worst thing about Trump, he's let Bibi lead him around like a dog on a leash.
Any other president would be infuriated with Bibi's actions, because they would know he's cornering the US. But he knew Trump was a pushover.
I-M-S 20 hours ago [-]
I guess any other president doesn't include Trump's direct predecessor, under whose watch Gaza was allowed to happen.
dkjaudyeqooe 15 hours ago [-]
A non sequitur followed by a claim that Biden is responsible for Israel's security on the ground against Hamas.
Well Israel's security forces were out to lunch on that score, given how Hamas literately walked all over them, so I can see how you might think that.
But don't let me get in your way while you try to divert attention away from Trump's current recklessness.
hajile 8 hours ago [-]
Israel ran out of bombs. Biden sent them more so the destruction and killing could continue.
Just one phone call from Biden saying STOP would have halted everything, but Biden is a self-admitted Zionist who never really wanted to stop things.
0dayz 18 hours ago [-]
Allow Gaza to happen? You mean Biden approved of Oct 7?
bravesoul2 17 hours ago [-]
No the "self defence" that happened in response to that. 1000s of tonnes of bombs shipped to kill civilians and enact genocide.
0dayz 9 hours ago [-]
Self defense? Afaik it was a war that now is a genocidal war.
ekam 16 hours ago [-]
He means the genocide and forced starvation of over a hundred thousand innocent Palestinians
0dayz 9 hours ago [-]
Biden was not in office when the war went from some genuine cause to full blown they can do whatever they want.
hajile 8 hours ago [-]
The people in Gaza have been starving for nearly 2 years now. Israel was stopping most food trucks from entering for well over a year of Biden's presidency.
Ar-Curunir 20 hours ago [-]
Did we live through the same Biden presidency?
tdeck 19 hours ago [-]
A lot of folks were at brunch.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
Weekend at Biden’s was just ice cream.
greenavocado 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
0dayz 18 hours ago [-]
Can we criticize Israel without obvious conspiracy bait.
Good job uncritically posting a fake screenshot. It's edited from the public stats page you can find on third-party 4chan archives. You can even check the numbers at a given date from the Internet Archive.
> On April 26, Ben-Gurion sent a letter to Kennedy warning about the forthcoming destruction of Israel due to the Treaty of Federation signed by Egypt, Syria and Iraq on April 17.
then later
> The most ominous part of Ben-Gurion’s letter was when he wrote: “Mr. President, my people have the right to exist – both in Israel and wherever they may live, and this existence is in danger.”
This article is funny. This is set in 1960. 10 years after Israel was attacked by an Arab coalition and 10 years before Israel was attacked AGAIN by guess who, an Arab coalition.
What do you expect, that president of a country lets it to be destroyed to later tell people like you "see, told ya"? Time doesn't allow you to go back. You can hate war but in this case it just seems like if they had no nukes they would be destroyed long ago by neighboring countries.
About 4chan link, Techchrunch basically sums it up:
> One 4chan janitor who spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity said they are “confident” the leaked data and screenshots are “all real”.
Yeah totally real. because 4chan was hacked by a competitor we can be sure there was nothing planted in the dump. And because the guy who posted the screenshot limits replies we can be sure it is doubly real.
Thinking how much antisemitism there was on 4chan I can only shrug.
throwawaythekey 18 hours ago [-]
> "To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.” President Trump
you have no idea what you're talking about - every single country that experiences domestic terrorism relies on israeli intelligence for counter terrorism. almost all of europe, us, much of the middle east all have very active intelligence partnerships.
if you think it's one-sided you're either severely misinformed or bigoted.
austin-cheney 11 hours ago [-]
Obviously I must be an anti-Semite if I don’t 150% support the politics of Israel and their brutality in the West Bank.
In reality though, I have completed 5 CENTCOM US military deployments. There are few people on HN more qualified to speak to the nature of US alliances in the region.
bushbaba 20 hours ago [-]
Actually now is different. The axis of resistance that would pop up (asad, Hezbollah, Hamas, houthis) are all basically gone and unable to mount an attack.
Saudi, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, HTS, and majority of Middle East is not in favor of Iran getting a nuke.
Hatred of Iran, is a unifying force.
PeterHolzwarth 19 hours ago [-]
Well put, and an important - and often either overlooked or fully unknown - point, especially in the west.
Many in the west see the middle east as a broadly similar unit, not realizing that there Iran represents a frequently highly-disliked section in the broader area. The neutralization of Iraq definitely has had an impact on that front as well (the two being hard core enemies for a long time).
siltcakes 19 hours ago [-]
The children of all the people killed by Israel will continue to resist. The US/Israel has created 100x new enemies in the past year and a half (not counting the billions outside of the ME).
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
Iran killed too many Ukrainians.
fastball 18 hours ago [-]
I thought the claim was that Israel was mostly killing the children?
TiredOfLife 14 hours ago [-]
Female child journalists.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
Not really. In much of the middle east, Iran is detested and considered an immediate enemy.
siltcakes 2 hours ago [-]
That's not true at all.
jimbob45 18 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hiddencost 20 hours ago [-]
I guess that's better than "axis of evil".
Looking forward to the strait of Hormuz shutting down...
scruple 19 hours ago [-]
Sounds like a good way to make China and Russia angry...
cloverich 19 hours ago [-]
Serious question re Russia: Can they actually get more engaged than they already are...? Because id thought the opposite; Russia is weaker than anyone since initial soviet breakup, isn't now the ideal time wrt to Israeli involvement?
vbezhenar 16 hours ago [-]
They can, but that would be stupid, because they need all the weapons they have to continue Ukrainian war.
China is the only country that can help Iran.
energy123 19 hours ago [-]
> the increased chance of nuclear war in the ME.
I disagree, given the high probability they were going to do it anyway. They built Natanz enrichment in secret, they built Arak in secret, they built Fordow in secret, not to mention the more recent violations of the NPT to which they're still a signatory. They've violated the NPT over and over and over again. Why would one more agreement make any difference to their clandestine program?
This is the thing Western liberals need to understand. The leaders of these despotic regimes don't think like you. They don't intend to adhere to the agreements like you would. Their psychology is different to your psychology. And you can't make a unilateral agreement with a party like this. The agreement becomes a weapon to creep forward and present the world with a fait accompli at a future date.
mrkeen 19 hours ago [-]
> This is the thing Western liberals need to understand.
First Western liberals needed to understand that Ukraine shouldn't have given up its nukes. Now they need to understand that Iran shouldn't have tried to get them.
energy123 19 hours ago [-]
The Ukraine situation proves my point, though. Russia was a signatory to an agreement with Ukraine to not do what they're doing. You can't make unilateral agreements with parties that have no intention of holding to them, as much as you would like to wishcast a different reality. The only option is a military one.
bigyabai 19 hours ago [-]
> The only option is a military one.
Oh, I've seen this one before! Then you install a police state, back it up with foreign weapons you sell to the police state in exchange for taxpayer money, forcibly "disappear" any disagreeable types and make the entire population hate your country for centuries to come!
All observers to trials since 1965 have reported allegations of torture which have been made by defendants and have expressed their own conviction that prisoners are tortured for the purpose of obtaining confessions. Alleged methods of torture include whipping and beating, electric shocks, the extraction of nails and teeth, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape.
Did "western liberals" get all that? Oh, I forgot this line by mistake!
SAVAK was established in 1967 with help from both the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
energy123 18 hours ago [-]
The false equivalency of destroying a democracy that had no nuclear ambitions, with attacking the nuclear facilities of a theocratic regime that has violated the NPT multiple times.
bravesoul2 16 hours ago [-]
Is it really about the treaties. Like US is a world cop and good guy that honours all treaties?
dkjaudyeqooe 15 hours ago [-]
How is "othering" people going to lead to peace? "Western liberals" aren't stupid or naive, they're just seeking a peaceful solution if possible.
And why are people so willing to believe that military force works? It mostly achieves nothing and leads to more violence.
It didn't work in Afghanistan, Iraq or Ukraine, but it will in Iran?
energy123 12 hours ago [-]
> "Western liberals" aren't stupid or naive, they're just seeking a peaceful solution if possible.
They're not stupid, but they are naive. Look at UN Resolution 1701. Hezbollah agreed to disarm. Then, they just ... didn't.
Predictably, there was no self-reflection among the people that believe in the primacy of diplomacy. This chain of events may as well have not even happened in their minds.
Then when Hezbollah attacks Israel, the same people call for more diplomacy, instead of telling Israel to just win the war against the group that has proven to be unwilling to adhere to agreements.
Then when Israel won the war, finally there was a reconstitution of the Lebanese sovereignty over South Lebanon, which would not have occurred under any diplomatic solution. But predictably, still no self-reflection from any of the people that tried to pursue diplomacy.
I also disagree they want peace. They want "peace", meaning appeasement and kicking the can down the road, and meaning they don't have to be bothered hearing about this stressful news cycle anymore.
Izikiel43 20 hours ago [-]
For your first point, that’s not as big of an issue as it used to for the USA thanks to fracking, now the USA is a net exporter of oil.
For the second, I don’t think anything other than an air campaign like it’s been done will happen, it’s not like the USA is out for blood like after 9/11.
For the third, yeah, that’s unfortunately possible, North Korea, Ukraine and now this show that the only way no one messes with you is by having a good enough deterrent. However, even if this hadn’t happened, if Iran got a bomb, they wouldn’t threaten like nk does to get stuff, it would just test it on Israel, so you would get nuclear war anyway.
21 hours ago [-]
deadbabe 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
csoups14 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
monkaiju 18 hours ago [-]
Blows my mind how people think Iran is building nuclear weapons when nobody in the intel community does... Thought y'all wouldve learned after Iraq but guess not...
I thought part of Trump's campaign was that he'd distance the US from foreign conflicts and not get involved so much. Is he trying to renege on every single thing he campaigned on?
wvbdmp 13 hours ago [-]
I think this one is less of a Trump flip-flop in particular. It seems that US presidents just can’t defy these things, even when their whole point is being an outsider. The pressures and propaganda a president is subject to must hit substantially different. Or, if you will, the realities they have to face. Obama ran on closing Gitmo and even that he couldn’t do in two terms (which seems especially absurd in light of Trump’s evident power to just make things happen unilaterally). I’m no Trump supporter but I do still think he was in a unique position to ignore this sort of stuff. Pity it wasn’t enough.
econ 19 hours ago [-]
We have all this technology but you can't get a decent overview of any conflict. There is liveuamap which seems to have data and certainly is better than any other website I know of but the ui is a horrific mess.
I think it is important for the people of the world to get an idea how things are unfolding.
It should be an animation of the exchanges both verbally and physically. Have a complete set of news sources for each action.
The BBC is not something you can trust to report on anything. I can't even see a date with the article? Pictures of the situation room??? Trump's name written in gold??What a waste of my time.
Games from the 90's provide better visualizations than anything online today.
mrkeen 18 hours ago [-]
It's not in governments' interests to allow their citizens information without taking the opportunity to spin it first.
16 hours ago [-]
neilv 19 hours ago [-]
In that reporting stream, at 22:58, "White House releases photos of Trump in Situation Room"[1], I'm struck that we are in a timeline that is not only dark, but surreal.
It sounds trite to say from a position of relative comfort and distance, but I can only hope that someday our better selves will find peace with each other, around the globe.
But we won't be able to undo all the injustices and atrocities that we inflicted upon each other. We know these wrongs as we are doing them, and they will remain upon us.
Nothing odd about that. I'm thinking of photos of Obama and Hillary in the situation room, observing the strikes on Bin Laden in realtime.
seydor 16 hours ago [-]
Remote War photos are now commonplace. The striking thing is that he is wearing his MAGA hat, as if he purposely wants to piss off his base who had delusions of "no wars president"
wvbdmp 13 hours ago [-]
Ah, but it isn’t a war. Just a little operation. It’s perfectly regular, everone does it, ask anyone.
seydor 10 hours ago [-]
145 airplanes , months of planning, weeks of positioning, it's very hard to claim it's not a war
fastball 18 hours ago [-]
What is surreal about Trump being in the Situation Room?
DangitBobby 3 hours ago [-]
The use of a crisis for a photo-op, for one. He's wearing a fucking MAGA hat!
neilv 18 hours ago [-]
As photojournalism, the image is brilliant. Though not entirely candid, that subtext contributes.
baobabKoodaa 12 hours ago [-]
You didn't answer the question.
neilv 11 hours ago [-]
I'm not going to bother, when already-triggered people are downvoting this thread so hard.
Ozzie_osman 19 hours ago [-]
I imagine every reasonably-sized country looking at this and thinking: "well, we'd be idiots not to have nuclear weapons by any means necessary."
This will be one of the single-most proliferation-inducing events in history, maybe save Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
energy123 19 hours ago [-]
The opposite. They're thinking "if we try to do this, we will die, because their intelligence knows where we are at all times".
This war is quite paradigm shifting in multiple ways, and I'm hopeful it serves as a strong deterrent. No longer will soldiers be the first to die. The leadership is now first to die, and within a week. That significantly alters the incentives for pursuing war. This was never the case until today.
riffraff 17 hours ago [-]
Knowing "where you are" is irrelevant. Iraq was invaded under the pretense of having weapons of mass destruction, so the rational thing to do is having them anyway, cause the US can bomb you anytime if you don't. Meanwhile, North Korea is 100% fine.
energy123 17 hours ago [-]
The rational thing is to be killed in an airstrike when you are 10% into your nuclear program? I don't understand the justification for this opinion.
seanmcdirmid 18 hours ago [-]
Just wait for China to get rich enough to counter American military dominance, and then ally with them for protection. Iran is already half way to becoming a Chinese vassal state, either it falls apart or becomes one completely after this.
seydor 17 hours ago [-]
a rogue nuke can "accidentally slip in" from another evil country. a few more nukes and you're now un-nukeable.
deterrence works. we should admit it
_heimdall 18 hours ago [-]
This is the ultimate gamble here. On one path, those considering a nuke could be deterred after realizing the Trump administration is willing to use that as a reason to attack. On the other path, countries could either decide the risk of attack is necessary or estimate the risk of future administrations acting similarly as low enough to go for the bomb.
kilroy123 18 hours ago [-]
To be fair. I think what happened in Ukraine did far more to cause nations to think like this.
The US convinced Ukraine to give up its nukes and return them to Russia. Russia was supposed to never attack in exchange.
Putin is a sociopath, which equips him with all the necessary tools to charm the easily flattered.
selivanovp 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bad_username 16 hours ago [-]
What actually happened was Ukrainians rebelling against a Putin's puppet. I know because I was there rebelling and absolutely nobody "staged" me.
selivanovp 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
TheAlchemist 19 hours ago [-]
Yep, that's how it ends. I expect, there will be many many countries with nukes in 2030. Even a country like Poland, which is part of Nato, announced that it will seek to acquire nuclear weapons in the future.
thoughtstheseus 18 hours ago [-]
South Korea looks like they are pursing nukes already.
muzani 18 hours ago [-]
We started thinking that after seeing Palestine get bombed and US vetoing every attempt at aid. We used to be a neutral country since independence, but Ukraine and Gaza proved that the world will just stand aside and watch the neutral countries get exterminated by nuclear nations.
BLKNSLVR 17 hours ago [-]
Strangely (maybe), the US seems to be vassal to Israel.
The extent to which condemning something approaching genocide is accused of being an anti-semitic position is... telling.
Not to say that there aren't ridiculous levels of complexity to the whole situation, but the pendulum is being held very far to one side by the king.
dundarious 18 hours ago [-]
I think you put a few too many negatives in that first sentence, and are missing a clause. As-is, you're just imagining them not thinking something.
Ozzie_osman 18 hours ago [-]
Thanks. I was missing another negative but I opted to just take them all out.
viccis 17 hours ago [-]
The Russia-Ukraine war already did that. Ukraine let us talk them into giving up their nukes, and see what happened.
Iran having nukes would mean peace in the Middle East.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
Iran having nukes (and recall that in the broader middle east, Iran is largely considered a dangerous enemy) would result in the rest of the middle east pursuing their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran. Iran having nukes is a very bad idea - that's why the west , and even countries beyond, have been working for decades to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
viccis 5 hours ago [-]
That would be fine too. The Soviets stealing our nuclear information was the biggest pro-peace act of the 20th century.
FuckButtons 18 hours ago [-]
Any self respecting dictator could see the writing on the wall after Gadaffi, or for that matter, Sadam. A domestic nuclear program though is still not a simple proposition.
I_am_tiberius 19 hours ago [-]
I wouldn’t be surprised if North Korea is now doubling its efforts and even offering Russia additional resources to help it acquire nuclear capabilities.
shepherdjerred 18 hours ago [-]
Doesn't NK already have nukes?
kelipso 18 hours ago [-]
More means better deterrence I guess. Didn’t China decide to build a shitton more to match the US numbers recently?
I_am_tiberius 17 hours ago [-]
You're right. Didn't know!
FergusArgyll 12 hours ago [-]
This is the kind of high information commenters we have on HN when it comes to non CS related issues
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
North Korea has nukes, which has seriously changed the calculus in the region. Worse is that they are a vassal state of China.
IceHegel 17 hours ago [-]
This is obviously correct. Nuclear weapons = sovereignty. UN recognition is a piece of paper.
9 countries exist. So much for self-determination.
seydor 16 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't be surprised to see an end to non-proliferation treaty and large nuclear alliances.
jimbob45 18 hours ago [-]
You say that but Iran couldn’t even escalate their rhetoric post-strike because “Every American is now a legitimate target” is now a tired refrain rather than a feared declaration.
The lesson here is not to make idle threats against half of the world that you don’t honestly mean.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
Iran can’t project power. Other than employing their terrorist proxies - they are in a no win situation.
Russia and China can’t project power either. Only few countries can and the US is the best at it.
partiallypro 18 hours ago [-]
History disagrees with you, and Iran is the #1 state sponsor of terrorism. They were even providing Russia with arms for their invasion of Ukraine. Let's not equate them with many others, such as Poland, etc. Iran absolutely should not be allowed under any circumstances to have a nuclear weapon. If they were as close as what intelligence seems to indicate (though I know that's hard to believe after the Iraq war, but we aren't in a ground war so the burden of proof is understandably less) then I frankly don't think it would have mattered if it were Kamala, Biden, or Trump in office. The facilities were getting bombed.
The scenario was already war gamed during the Biden administration, it was already a possible outcome. The G7 already backed this idea that Iran can't have this before, and they'll do it again. The US doesn't stand alone on this, Saudi Arabia and basically everyone in the region and world doesn't want Iran having a nuke sans Russia/China. I'm not even sure if Russia/China really want it either. It's just common sense.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
This is absolutely the case. We've been collectively fighting to stop Iran from getting nukes for decades. In much of the middle east, Iran is considered a serious enemy. Iran getting nuclear weapons would mean the rest of the middle east would instantly feel compelled to get their own.
17 hours ago [-]
khazhoux 17 hours ago [-]
I don't follow your logic.
You're saying that there exists some country capable of a nuclear weapons program (an exceedingly difficult thing), that for some reason has not actually built one, and now that they see Iran pummeled for trying to build theirs... is now incentivized to finally go for it??
dingaling 14 hours ago [-]
Turkey, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Finland and even Switzerland* are all assessed as having the capability but having refrained for political reasons.
* the Swiss nuclear weapons programme ran for over four decades during the Cold War
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
The issue is that a nuclear armed Iran (and remember that Iran is largely detested in the middle east, and is broadly considered to be a destabilizing enemy) would result in the rest of the middle east feeling compelled to quickly pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. No one wants an nuclear armed Iran.
snickerbockers 16 hours ago [-]
I'm concerned by the appearance that the Trump administration was negotiating with the Iranians in bad faith to buy time for an Israeli operation Before America joined the war it was a bad look since it benefits us but it still wasn't outside the realm of possibilities that Israel did this of its own initiative since they're obviously insane. Now that we've taken advantage of the opportunity, it really looks like Trump may have been negotiating in bad faith.
I'm personally of the opinion that the Israeli operation forced Trump's hand and he realized that he can't trust the Iranians going forward since they have no reason to trust us going forward. That's just my opinion; I obviously can't expect anybody else negotiating nuclear non-proliferation (or anything else related to war or peace) with America in the future to have such an optimistic outlook on this turn of events.
If the Israelis did force his hand then I personally can accept that he made the tough call that needed to be made in that moment, but then the next call needs to be distancing us from the Israelis because we can't have an ally that fucks everything up when we're negotiating, *especially* when they literally assassinated the guy who was negotiating with Trump on Iran's behalf.
14 hours ago [-]
blobbers 20 hours ago [-]
Is it safe to blow up a nuclear plant? Doesn't that cause bad things to spread?
palmfacehn 9 hours ago [-]
If you believe they are manufacturing a nuclear weapon, then it is less bad than the nuke detonating.
coliveira 19 hours ago [-]
Yes, but who said that Trump cares about any consequences of his actions?
blobbers 19 hours ago [-]
It sounds like this stuff is underground sound so maybe it doesn't contaminate everything?
dankobgd 13 hours ago [-]
Americans only care about stealing oil and gas
johncole 9 hours ago [-]
Is HN getting political now?
neilv 8 hours ago [-]
Calling something "political" these days can sound dismissive.
The news of the US entering a war, with a first-strike major bombing, is extremely serious.
nailer 9 hours ago [-]
It had been in the last few months. More political stories make the front page and the mods seem to allow more political discussion. The effect has not been positive.
shutupnerd0000 5 hours ago [-]
Are we allowing politics on Hacker News now?
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
monkeyelite 3 hours ago [-]
They let it happen when they want it to but the rule remains for any other inconvenient time.
IceHegel 17 hours ago [-]
I voted for Trump. I'd support his impeachment now.
He has betrayed his core by letting Israel suck our country into another Middle Eastern conflict, after promising to do the opposite.
SG- 17 hours ago [-]
voting a bozo in gets you bozo outcomes.
lunarboy 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sonofhans 15 hours ago [-]
It boggles my mind that you ever thought Trump had a principled stand on anything. Most of the world has known since the 1980s exactly who Donald Trump is.
hajile 8 hours ago [-]
Kamala and Biden both promised MORE war with Ukraine while already backing Israel in their genocide too.
Trump promised LESS war with Ukraine while having softer backing for Israel and (generally) turning down the heat during his first presidency.
I never voted for him, but I can certainly see why so many anti-war voters did as he had the most anti-war rhetoric around other than Ron Paul's libertarian run and maybe Bernie Sanders (with his primary getting stolen by Hillary).
techpineapple 6 hours ago [-]
It’s wild to me that in a time when trust of elites is so low that people would vote based on rhetoric and not past behavior.
17 hours ago [-]
bravesoul2 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
monkeyelite 3 hours ago [-]
Are you implying the other candidate would have avoided Israeli entanglement?
They differ on many axis, but not this one.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
I understand what you mean, but we've been in this conflict for decades already. America and loads of other countries have been working to stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. Remember that in much of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy. A nuclear armed Iran would result in the rest of the middle east rapidly pursuing nukes by way of defense against Iran - a country most of the middle east views as a combatant and an enemy.
I won't comment or discuss who you voted for - that isn't germane here. What is important is that America has been working for decades - often quite blatantly, sometimes with the thinnest veneer of deniability - to stop Iran from getting nukes. We're now just saying the quiet part out loud.
einpoklum 17 hours ago [-]
> America and loads of other countries have been working to stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons.
1. America is a continent. You probably mean the USA.
2. What the US has been working to stop Iran from is being independent of its near-control - which it had gained with the 1953 CIA-fomented coup d'etat against the Mossadegh government, and lost again in 1979 when the Islamist-headed faction of the rebellion gained power. While it's true that the US would not like Iran to have nuclear weapons, that has served more as an excuse to try and suppress it rather than actual motivation.
PeterHolzwarth 15 hours ago [-]
No, America is a country - you demonstrate this by knowing exactly which country I refer to when I say the word. Pop quiz: how many countries have the word "America" in their name?
#2 is not worth responding to, as you didn't feel the need to respond to my broader point: anti-proliferation in the middle east has been a long-pursued initiative by the west and much of the rest of the world for decades.
17 hours ago [-]
koonsolo 16 hours ago [-]
This is the "Why don't you use diplomacy?" administration, right? So why didn't the great negotiator use diplomacy?
ndgold 19 hours ago [-]
Is it true that all war = illegal ?
nlitened 16 hours ago [-]
There are literally international legal documents regulating wars.
yibg 18 hours ago [-]
Perhaps, but even if that's true it doesn't mean both sides committed an illegal act. Defending against and responding to attacks is not illegal.
austin-cheney 12 hours ago [-]
I see a lot of nonsense in the comments.
Here are the facts:
1. Iran may or may not have been building a nuclear weapon. US intelligence says they were at least 3 years away.
2. Iran did not attack Israel. Israel attacked Iran.
3. Iran did not attack the US. The US bombed Iran only because Israel asked the US to do so.
That was in response to an Israeli attack on Iran. If you really want to dig that up then it’s twice now in the recent term that Israel attacked Iran without provocation.
zac23or 10 hours ago [-]
> Iran did not attack Israel. Israel attacked Iran.
Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah are supported by Iran.
austin-cheney 10 hours ago [-]
This is a stupid argument. It’s chaos theory. Iran receives support from Russia and China. Did Russia and China attack Israel? No, they didn’t and neither did Iran.
Most of the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels come directly from the US. That does not mean the US supports the actions of the drug cartels.
zac23or 8 hours ago [-]
> This is a stupid argument
Every time I try to talk to someone online and they start with "you are/your arguments are stupid", that says more about the person saying it than anything else. I won't continue.
austin-cheney 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, when I see ignorant people string together hyperbolic word salad far deviated from any fact I get to call it stupid, especially when that stupidity likely qualifies sending me to an unnecessary war while they hide behind their computer, like cowards, getting their news from TikTok.
frollogaston 6 hours ago [-]
Relax.
tim333 9 hours ago [-]
Indeed the US does not support the drug cartels, Iran does support Hezbollah. They are different. Wikipedia:
> Hezbollah's 1985 manifesto outlined its key objectives, which include expelling Western influence from the region, destroying Israel, pledging allegiance to Iran's supreme leader...
austin-cheney 9 hours ago [-]
What does that have to do with Israel bombing Iran right now? I just see people performing absurd mental gymnastics to invent unfounded qualifications for going to war.
tim333 7 hours ago [-]
Iran has declared it wants Israel destroyed, attacked it via it's proxies and been working on making weapons grade uranium. Israel not wanting to be destroyed or nuked has arranged to attack Iran's nuke facilities. Is it that complicated?
austin-cheney 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, it is complicated. Israel says the same things and now its primary proxy just bombed Iran. Iran did not initiate these attacks. Israel did. Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is years away from having them, but Israel has them.
When you peel back the baseless rhetoric this issue is completely one sided.
kurtis_reed 7 hours ago [-]
Lol
geeunits 11 hours ago [-]
Has everyone forgotten the music festival massacre?
austin-cheney 11 hours ago [-]
Not Iran related and not US related.
geeunits 11 hours ago [-]
Ah, it happened in a vacuum -- got it.
austin-cheney 11 hours ago [-]
That is what all the intelligence says. I am unclear what you are hinting at.
tgv 11 hours ago [-]
Hamas was installed, backed and supplied by Iran.
austin-cheney 11 hours ago [-]
Please stop making shit up. Hamas was voted into power.
Iran had nothing to do with the Oct7 attack on Israeli civilians. They were not part of the planning, had no prior knowledge of it, and supplied no material support for it.
Actually, let’s take this to the next level. Iran did provide financial support to Hamas. So, did Israel.
No one can possible forget, given that we're reminded daily of it, you know, by the ongoing genocide.
belter 11 hours ago [-]
Ukraine should learn. This how you do it. Bribe enough US Senators and the US will do anything for you. Even put US military lives in danger.
22 hours ago [-]
bentobean 5 hours ago [-]
> It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region.
> Israel is a hideous entity in the middle east which will undoubtedly be annihilated.
> Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon (Israel). We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.
> Western countries allow no freedom of expression, which they claim to advocate, with regard to the myth of the massacre of Jews known as the holocaust, and nobody in the West enjoys the freedom of expression to deny it or raise doubts about it.
- Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
Those who defend the Iranian regime or suggest that the Israeli government is the greater threat do so to their disgrace. SMH.
TheAlchemist 18 hours ago [-]
And now what ?
If the current regime stays in power, it's pretty much a guarantee that they will pursue nuclear weapons by all means available, in the future.
If the US / Israel want to topple the regime... that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan....
Also, isn't it really illegal for a US president to authorize a strike like this without Congress ?
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
No, it is not illegal for a US president to authorize strikes like this. American hasn't formally declared war since WWII.
Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for decades - and no one, especially no one in the middle east - wants a nuclear armed Iran. America and its partners - and quite often its not-partners - have been working to stop Iranian uranium enrichment for a very long time.
As for "guarantees they will pursue nuclear weapons by all means" -- that's the point: they've already been doing so nonstop for decades.
In much of the middle east, Iran is detested, and a nuclear armed Iran is deeply feared throughout the region. Iran with nukes means the rest of the middle east will feel compelled to pursue nuclear weapons as well. Again, in vast swaths of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy.
TheAlchemist 16 hours ago [-]
"they've already been doing so nonstop for decades" - I would think it's not that complicated to make a nuclear bomb today, is it ? Technology has been there for almost 100 years already.
PeterHolzwarth 15 hours ago [-]
Your thinking would be wrong, then. Making nuclear weapons is ridiculously complicated, tedious, and requires access to loads of very specific technology.
TheAlchemist 14 hours ago [-]
I would actually love to read a bit about it. Like, let's say a reasonably sized developed country - say Australia for example, decides that making nukes it's a national priority. How long it would take them ?
seydor 15 hours ago [-]
> that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan....
I think that was the plan. Israeli and american and turkish planes are now freely flying over Syria , iraq, (i assume also afghanistan) to conduct attacks. Iran is being set up as theater for long proxy war. The rest of middle east and libya is controlled by turkey & israel which seem to have complementary interests as proxies of the US. At the moment it appears the US/israeli dominance in the whole former Ottoman empire is strong, but inevitably (and quickly) we will see dozens of unconventional wars in the region (what we call terrorism)
fiatpandas 18 hours ago [-]
President can authorize precision strikes and special ops if there’s imminent threat justification. I’m not arguing either way if this strike was justified, but there’s legal pathways for it. The congress rule is about declaring war.
ergocoder 18 hours ago [-]
> the US / Israel want to topple the regime... that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan....
Then, they wouldn't be organized enough to build a nuclear weapon. That would be a better outcome.
seanmcdirmid 18 hours ago [-]
A chaotic broken Iran is going to be a powder keg for the world that keeps erupting unless the US is willing to just glass the entire country. It only looks like a better outcome in the very short term.
IAmGraydon 18 hours ago [-]
This information is just a google search away, so I’ll assume you’re willfully ignorant. No it’s not illegal. It can go on for 60 days before requiring authorization by Congress.
ActorNightly 18 hours ago [-]
Why are people surprised when Trump does things illegally?
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
In the American body of law and legislation, strikes such as these aren't illegal. Honestly, we've been doing stuff like this for decades.
fastball 18 hours ago [-]
Did it surprise you when Obama did the same?
doofusmcgoo 17 hours ago [-]
Nope. Because he didn't do anything illegal.
Thanks for calling, goodnight.
jasonboyd 17 hours ago [-]
Are you sure? He certainly engaged in a lot of military operations in several countries without Congress's approval. He also ramped up drone strikes dramatically.
kelnos 13 hours ago [-]
Not to justify what Obama did, but that all fell under the post-9/11 "War on Terror" AUMF.
righthand 17 hours ago [-]
Because acting unsurprised means giving Trump a pass. It means normalizing awful things and normalizing hate and hurt. No one actually wants the world where he has no moral limits.
vaughands 22 hours ago [-]
Seriously, what is the benefit to the US here? I can't understand how this benefits the country at all.
kumarvvr 20 hours ago [-]
If Iran has nukes, then a nuke race will start in the middle East, especially with Saudis, who will want their own nukes.
Iran getting nukes is the spark that will start a lot of chain reactions.
And islamic populations are radicalized enough that the possibility of a nuke on Israel increases dramatically.
selcuka 20 hours ago [-]
> If Iran has nukes, then a nuke race will start in the middle East
A fair concern, but it is interesting that although "estimates of Israel's stockpile range between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads" [1], we are not concerned about those warheads as much as we do about the ones Iran might have. Should US bomb Israeli nuclear plants? No. Should they have bombed the Iranian ones? Why?
Maybe it has something to do with Israel being an ally and Iran sponsoring terrorism all over the region
DangitBobby 3 hours ago [-]
More and more I find our alliance with Israel in need of justification.
guelo 2 hours ago [-]
"terrorism" is just war fighting that we don't like. Israel is by far the biggest aggressor in the middle east having bombed half a dozen countries in the last year.
partiallypro 18 hours ago [-]
We didn't want Israel to have nukes either, we tried to stop them and failed. We wouldn't bomb Israel's nukes because they -already- have them, and they have grown in a semi-reliable regional ally since then. We are trying to stop Iran from having them at all to prevent them from being essentially off-limits to retaliation (note Iran is the #1 state sponsor of terrorism / people's fears of supporting Ukraine given Russia keeps threatening nuclear action) and kicking off a regional nuclear arms race.
yonisto 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
heavyset_go 19 hours ago [-]
> Death to Arabs is an anti-Arab slogan originating in Israel. It is often used during protests and civil disturbances across Israel, the West Bank, and to a lesser extent, the Gaza Strip. Depending on the person's temperament, it may specifically be an expression of anti-Palestinianism or otherwise a broader expression anti-Arab sentiment, which includes non-Palestinian Arabs.
I forgot that the state of Israel is more important than the lives of a half billion people.
0dayz 9 hours ago [-]
Why do you prioritize Israel over half a billion?
all_factz 19 hours ago [-]
Have you been to Israel? I have cousins there. When I was 14 and visited, my 19 year old cousin told me we need to kill all the Arabs because “if we exile them, they will just come back.” Do you really think (a large segment of) Israelis are less crazy than (a large segment of) Iranians?
yonisto 5 hours ago [-]
No. People are crazy everywhere. That is not the same as the actual leaders of the country. The one that are calling the shots making the same claims for 46 years.
Now, I don't know if you noticed, your cousins while they are not kind to Arabs (which if you had Arab cousins you would have noticed that they are not very kind to Jews), have nothing whatsoever with Iran, no more than they have anything with Napal.
1500km away!
vFunct 19 hours ago [-]
Israel has always threatened its neighbors. Remember, it was born as a group of European Jews that attacked Palestine to conquer their land, with arms provided to them by Europe. It will always exist under a state of war.
We have to let Israel die off and change our alliances. An alliance with Iran would be much more beneficial to America than an alliance with Israel.
18 hours ago [-]
danenania 20 hours ago [-]
I think this attack makes it more likely they’ll get nukes, not less. They moved all their enriched uranium already, and now they know that there’s no longer any point in diplomacy.
The next facilities they build will be a few times deeper, and I have no doubt we’ll soon be hearing that ground troops are the only way to stop them.
dlubarov 20 hours ago [-]
They had already crossed the line into nuclear tech that's specifically for weapons, i.e. with a 400kg stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%. Unless we accept explanations like "scientific curiosity", they were already somewhere in the process of building nuclear weapons, even if success wasn't immanent.
I don't know how long these operations will set them back, but if the Iranian regime won't willingly refrain from nuclear weapons work, isn't a delay better than nothing?
jjk166 19 hours ago [-]
60% enrichment is not weapons grade. Weapons grade is 80%. High enrichment is used in certain reactor designs, such as naval reactors.
There are a lot of reasons to be enriching uranium besides building nuclear weapons. Considering the US reneged on its deal to drop sanctions in exchange for Iran to not enrich uranium, it is pretty obviously useful as a bargaining chip, in the negotiations.
The US intelligence community assessed that Iran has not been working on a bomb since the program was shut down in 2003. They didn't want a nuke, they wanted an end to sanctions. They further wanted to avoid provoking exactly this sort of conflict. This did not delay them getting nuclear weapons, it will make them get nuclear weapons.
dlubarov 18 hours ago [-]
To quote an ISIS report, "Iran has no civilian use or justification for its production of 60 percent enriched uranium, particularly at the level of hundreds of kilograms". In theory it could be for naval propulsion, but experts (including IAEA inspectors) seem unconvinced.
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
They had a very obvious use for it: trade it to the US in exchange for sanctions relief.
danenania 20 hours ago [-]
They “could have” had nuclear weapons for a long time if they’d wanted to, yes, but they didn’t get them. They signed the NPT, allowed inspections, and their ruler issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons. Why’d they do all that if their goal all along was to get a nuclear weapon? They could have just done it.
These attacks make it clear that they would have been better off if they had gotten them, so it seems reasonable to assume this will be their new policy. What other strategic choice have they been left with?
dlubarov 19 hours ago [-]
Just to clarify, is your position that Iran was never working toward nuclear weapons, or just not until recently? I think enriching uranium to 60% is pretty clear evidence of their intent, even though it's just one component of an eventual weapon.
Being an NPT signatory could be evidence of Iran not working toward nuclear weapons, if they were compliant. But they have violated their NPT obligations on some occasions, with major violations recently.
guelo 2 hours ago [-]
Why would it be up to a rogue non-NPT country, Israel, to enforce the NPT?
danenania 18 hours ago [-]
I think they wanted to be seen as credibly close as a deterrent and bargaining chip in negotiations, but they had no intention of going all the way unless attacked.
Now they likely do intend to get them asap if they’re able to.
mupuff1234 20 hours ago [-]
Those can be bombed right at the beginning. Israel will probably try to establish a similar status que as in Lebanon right now - "if you make a move we immediately take it out".
And the development of a nuclear sites leaves a significant intelligence trail, not sure it can be hidden.
(Of course they can always be gifted a bomb, but that's a very different story)
danenania 20 hours ago [-]
Yeah I’m sure it will be a huge success with no unforeseen consequences whatsoever. Since that’s how these things have been going over the last thirty years.
mupuff1234 18 hours ago [-]
Can't that be said about every path of action in this scenario?
nashashmi 20 hours ago [-]
Islamic populations?
kumarvvr 20 hours ago [-]
Most of Islamic republics are fiefdoms, kingdoms and dictatorships. Most of the populations are radicalized, and have very limited freedom of speech and right to protest.
nashashmi 2 hours ago [-]
I will not seek to engage with you on this matter. You have developed a cynical and propagandistic approach to demonize and vilify. Just understand that all of your information is wrong.
Ar-Curunir 20 hours ago [-]
Have you lived in any of these Islamic countries?
booleandilemma 19 hours ago [-]
You just have to read a wikipedia article on them. No need to live there.
kumarvvr 19 hours ago [-]
Is that a pre-condition to know about countries, leaderships and general public?
I have not lived in the US, and I know a lot about the US national character.
nashashmi 4 hours ago [-]
> I have not lived in the US, and I know a lot about the US national character
That is not a good comparison. The US is well reported enough in news and media and movie to have a good awareness of the culture within. You also understand their language.
However, the Arab world is not reported well enough apart from biased sources that seek to defame and discredit them. And neither would you understand their language. So no your awareness of their culture and country and leadership is so far fallen yet you think it is sufficient that it becomes dangerous.
There is no such thing as Islamic population unless you are an Islamophobe who have sought to “other” this part of the world
Ar-Curunir 17 hours ago [-]
Yes, I would say that making sweeping statements about a populace does require actual first-hand experience with said populace.
jenny91 19 hours ago [-]
Almost a kind of domino theory, if you will?
vFunct 19 hours ago [-]
And that's something we will have to accept, that Islamic populations will always have nukes.
How do you plan to handle a world with Islamic populations having nukes? Because that's something you will have to plan for. You have no choice. They will not let you not let them have nukes. They will make sure they will have nukes. That's just given.
arandomusername 22 hours ago [-]
It doesn't. It's all because Israel has extreme influence over US politicians.
proc0 21 hours ago [-]
The US is the leader of the liberal empire which depends on the middle east allowing trade. Iran is standing in the way of this and wants to push back the empire's control away from the middle east... but they have their own plans to establish another empire of their own.
I know "empire" is maybe an outdated term but I'm just illustrating there are bigger incentives than at the national level. Ironically it is conservative nationalists (who are hated by the Left) that want the empire to shrink and for the US to pull back from this leadership position. The risk here is it could also destabilize the entire world, but that's a different matter.
In short, this move is an attempt to strengthen the status quo that began after WW2.If the status quo is maintained it directly benefits the US.
Workaccount2 20 hours ago [-]
People who were born into, grew up in, and live the current western bubble take it for granted and genuinely believe it is something natural rather than carefully built and expensively maintained - for extraordinary benefit.
frollogaston 19 hours ago [-]
I don't take it for granted, but Israel and these trillion-dollar Mid East wars don't seem to help it. China and Russia must be very pleased with the US being so distracted for the past 50 years while they established economic control even in the Mid East.
tombh 19 hours ago [-]
If I had only one wish, it would be to burst this bubble.
komali2 20 hours ago [-]
> for extraordinary benefit.
I'm seeing a lot of death and the payoff is... Cheap gas prices? I can't imagine what. But the replies to this laying out all the benefits of blood soaked American hegemony I'm sure will be great for a laugh.
MegaButts 20 hours ago [-]
The petrodollar, which largely depends on the US having significant influence over global oil supply, is arguably the main reason why the USD is the global reserve currency and an enormous reason why the US is as wealthy as it is.
dralley 19 hours ago [-]
The petrodollar is severely overrated by people who claim it's the cause for every foreign policy decision they disagree with. USD is attractive because the US government is stable and US companies are attractive investments, due to a historical track record of competence and rule of law adherence - unlike, say, Saudi currency, or Russian currency, or Chinese currency. The US government doesn't do a lot of currency manipulation relative to those other countries either.
Of course, that historical record is being shat upon currently, and the importance of petroleum is on a downward trajectory from here on.
frollogaston 19 hours ago [-]
We aren't even really getting cheap gas prices out of this. Iran is one of the largest oil producers, and we won't allow trade with them, so instead we've built a relationship with other dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, who know we have no other choice. But our actions are also straining that.
guelo 20 hours ago [-]
This is the opposite of how I see it. This move is a complete repudiation of the post-ww2 order that emphasized the system of international laws and treaties developed by the UN. For the US to blindly follow Israel into a war with a sovereign country without even taking it to the UN or Congress is preposterous and signals the end of the post-ww2 and American domestic order. Both the UN Charter and the US Constitution are trashed and we won't recover from it in our life times. There's a reason Bush W sent Colin Powell to the UN, we still paid lip service to the rule of law 20 years ago. We don't even pretend anymore. We are trashing our laws and institution all at the behest of some a tiny racist religious extremist country.
lunar-whitey 20 hours ago [-]
I don’t envy the position of American diplomats the next time they are asked to negotiate an off-ramp from hostilities while military options are simultaneously being considered. Intentional or not, the diplomatic posture leading up to this point reads like diversion.
jaybrendansmith 19 hours ago [-]
This is also how I see it. This child-man has just blown 80 years of careful control and credibility. Who allowed this to happen? A bunch of feckless children, who should never have been allowed to rule. Way to go, people. It all goes downhill from here.
nocoiner 19 hours ago [-]
I hate how much I agree with this assessment.
proc0 19 hours ago [-]
"the system of international laws and treaties" are only effective to the extent that someone is going to enforce it, and that someone is the US and its allies. So ultimately it's military power that matters.
The status quo is only maintained because the US has military bases all over the world. If we retreat from the world and let Iran do whatever it wants (which is more influence and an Islamic empire), the the world order crumbles and that has an even more increased chance of WW3, as multiple nations will fight over the void left behind by the US.
Part of the reason things are unfolding this way is because the US rose to world power with the invention of the nuclear bomb.... which automatically means that toppling the US might mean nuclear war, which spells doom for the entire world. Not sure I would call that luck, but that is why the world cannot change to a new world order easily without existential risk. And as the "world police" the US doesn't want non-allies to get the bomb for this reason (something that Trump has been saying for years, which proves he is just maintaining status quo).
cloverich 18 hours ago [-]
You realize we (us) are a large, religious, racist country? Generally speaking, anti muslim, anti Iran sentiment is EXTREMELY high in the parts of the US that voted for Trump, at least based on my personal network.
macintux 20 hours ago [-]
Trump has undermined the status quo at every opportunity. He feels the US hasn’t been compensated for its efforts.
hiddencost 20 hours ago [-]
Nonsense. The history of the US is one of regime change wars and genocide.
jandrewrogers 21 hours ago [-]
Keeping the Arab world from building their own nuclear weapons has long been contingent on Iran not having a nuclear weapons program. It only benefits the US to the extent it prevents the situation where half the countries in the Middle East having nuclear weapons.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
Good lord, it benefits far more than just America if the broader middle east doesn't enter into a rapid nuclear weapons proliferation stage. Iran is considered to be a very serious enemy throughout much of the middle east. A nuclear armed Iran is a very bad idea.
20 hours ago [-]
Jtsummers 22 hours ago [-]
It benefits the MIC, this is unlikely to be the end of this conflict.
slv77 19 hours ago [-]
This paper from 1999 provides some context about the US and Israel relationship in the context of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
The third temple's holy of holies : Israel's nuclear weapons
the dude needs a PR win of some kind. I guess he gave up on the Nobel prize and decided to try something else. Aside from that, could really be a chance to end the nukes there and try to topple the regime, who knows what's going to happen, but time-wise now is the best opportunity.
Schnitz 20 hours ago [-]
The world is better off if a theocracy whose leadership believes in jihad doesn’t have nukes.
Smeevy 18 hours ago [-]
We should probably keep nukes away from these NAR whackadoodles and their puppets as well.
CapricornNoble 19 hours ago [-]
Why do you highlight that the theocracy "believes in jihad" and not that the theocracy has issued a religious decree opposing weapons of mass destruction?
Actions speak louder than words. Iran has been enriching Uranium beyond what is needed for civilian use and openly admits to doing so.
kaycebasques 8 hours ago [-]
This is my honest assessment of the calculus of the move. Please don't interpret any of this as me personally supporting or approving of these motives. I'm just trying to have a genuine intellectual discussion about the potential thought processes of our collective leaders.
* Quick, victorious wars can be incredibly popular domestically, regardless of whether surveys say that only 16% of the US population supports the war. Trump needs an approval ratings boost. The global tariff shock was a PR disaster. A quick, victorious war is a tried-and-true approval rating booster over the last 200-300 years. The key, of course, is actually keeping the war truly short and victorious. If it drags on, or if people start asking "have we truly won?", then that's a whole different matter.
* We have moved out of a unipolar geopolitical world and into a multipolar one. The USA is checking the ambitions of the rival powers. Want to invade Ukraine? Sure, go ahead and try, but it will be a multi-year slog. Want to go for years maybe developing nuclear weapons, maybe not, and making US antagonism a central part of your political platform? Watch us systematically attack your nuclear program and and air power and do highly targeted assassinations of your political elites over the course of two weeks. Want to invade Taiwan? Look at what happened in Ukraine and Iran and maybe reset your expectations about how that will pan out.
* There has been a lot of questioning lately around whether the US will actually help their allies when they're in a pinch. This is sending a pretty strong message of reassurance to allies.
* Trump may actually want things to escalate to a point where he can reasonably declare martial law within the US. How do you stay in power when you've already hit your two-term constitutional limit?
Your question was "how does it benefit the US?" but I don't think that's answerable because everyone has a different take on what's best for the US. It's much more feasible to discuss "how does it benefit Trump?" or "how does it maintain US's position as a world power?"
scythe 20 hours ago [-]
If this was about the benefit to the United States, then we would have had months of public buildup and debate like we did with the war in Iraq. It is hardly an example of a good decision, but history shows that it was at least a popular one; the majority of poll respondents and of legislators were both in favor of the initial invasion of Iraq. I was only eleven at the time, but I remember most moderate Democrats and independents who I knew (including, particularly, my seventh-grade history teacher, who was no fan of Bush) were in favor of the war.
Contrast that to the situation today, when polls show Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to involvement [1] and even some prominent Republican legislators (Gaetz, IIRC) were against the war. This is the Trump show: it's motivated by his ego and hopium. He's more erratic than ever. Historically, American presidents almost never started a major war without popular support (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were all popular when they started, and I think Libya and Kosovo were too). I can't even think of a case where the country was dragged into a war that was opposed 60% to 16% in favor. I would be very interested to hear if there ever was one.
> Ironically, South Korea wanted to do this to North Korea in 2003
Where did you get that info? Makes no sense. South Korea has been consistently against starting another war with NK for at least 30 years or so, and besides, in 2003 South Korea was ruled by Kim Dae-Jung, famous for he's staunch support of improving relations with North Korea (he got a Nobel prize for that), and then Roh Moo-Hyun, from the same party and largely following Kim's foreign policy.
Thanks to them we had no wars, and of course now we have some young whippersnappers complaining about their "pro-NK" policies, saying we could have totally bombed NK, starting a war, and burning the peninsula to the ground, but at least North Korea won't have nukes today!
alephnerd 22 hours ago [-]
This was during the 2002-03 standoff during which the Yeongpyeong crisis occured.
It was after the Six Party Talks started in Aug 2003 that tensions started cooling down, before North Korea stunned the world in 2006.
Edit: though now that I think about it, I might be confusing this incident with the 1993-94 incident.
Isn't it great when people take things out of context? In this case the context that wishing death is quite common in Iranian expressions of frustrations?
_heimdall 10 hours ago [-]
I understand that the phrase is intended to call for the end of the US government, not the end of the US people.
That even better supports my point though. Diplomacy is between two governments, not one government and the population of another government. Iran has practiced diplomacy at times, but calling for the end of the US government wouldn't exactly fit well in the implied reality of Iran having done everything they could diplomatically.
20 hours ago [-]
goatlover 22 hours ago [-]
While I understand not wanting countries like North Korea and Iran having nukes, it does protect them from invasion. We've seen what happened after Ukraine gave up their nukes. Less we forget, the Neocons of the Bush era wanted to remake the entire Middle East, not just Iraq and Afghanistan.
klipt 20 hours ago [-]
> nukes ... protect them from invasion
Israel has nukes and Hamas still invaded them.
Perhaps nukes protect you from invasion by rational actors, but I don't think they work on zealots.
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
And yet Israel does not denuclearize.
I certainly hope Iran's adversaries are rational actors.
alephnerd 22 hours ago [-]
Nukes alone do not prevent invasions.
You need to have delivery mechanisms like medium/long range ballistic missiles and second strike capabilities like SLCMs.
cempaka 22 hours ago [-]
Iran has been amply demonstrating their missile capabilities on the city of Tel Aviv for the past week.
alephnerd 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
fzeroracer 22 hours ago [-]
It seems like we're already seeing people here attempt to manufacture consent for a war with Iran.
Frankly you're not going to have a very strong chance of convincing me given Israel's actions over the past few years.
megous 22 hours ago [-]
Disarm Israel. And bomb it too if it will resist.
pfannkuchen 18 hours ago [-]
Which country with nukes has been invaded?
fzeroracer 22 hours ago [-]
The actions of the US and Israel are only proving an unfortunate trend of reality: The only deterrence against invasion from other countries is nuclear deterrence. We had a comprehensive deal with Iran to limit their nuclear program which Trump tore up in 2017 and which Israel is taking advantage of today.
porridgeraisin 22 hours ago [-]
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shihab 22 hours ago [-]
The source is mossad, in case anyone gets fooled by the presence of a citation like me.
fzeroracer 22 hours ago [-]
Truly the source which is currently attempting to drag us into a war with Iran (and succeeding) is one to be trusted.
s5300 22 hours ago [-]
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mslansn 22 hours ago [-]
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andsoitis 21 hours ago [-]
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shihab 21 hours ago [-]
I understand Iran is a headache to Israel, but did it have to be an enemy of USA? Isn't Iran's ambition, and its proxies, are all regional in nature? Have they ever attempted to harm an american living in America?
Israel has led an amazingly succesful campaign in presenting their problems (often arising out of their territorial ambitions) as a problem for the entire west.
Workaccount2 20 hours ago [-]
Letting a death cult of religious zealots have nukes is an awful idea for the entire world.
wudangmonk 20 hours ago [-]
I agree which is why we need to get all these evangelical nuts actively trying to destroy the world so that Jesus come back out of power. No more death cults!.
ndiddy 20 hours ago [-]
Agreed, I also support the denuclearization of Israel.
yencabulator 19 hours ago [-]
And hopefully also keeping US religious nuts away from power.
goatlover 19 hours ago [-]
Religious zealots close to power also exist in Israel and the US.
const_cast 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Ar-Curunir 20 hours ago [-]
So, Israel then?
nailer 20 hours ago [-]
Iran has killed a bunch of Americans, but typically not inside America.
The US has many economic and strategic interests in the Middle East.
The US is leaving many moments for Iran to come to the table to stop building towards nuclear power.
infamouscow 20 hours ago [-]
Khamenei is largely popular, even though the youth of Iran largely doesn't support the regime at a whole.
The root problem is the military is controlled by various factions of lunatics that want to see the end of Israel. It's these people ought to be mercilessly killed and I have no qualms once so ever advocating for brutal violence and (preferably) murder against them.
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
The Netherlands and Germany both produce highly enriched uranium despite not having nuclear weapons programs. 60% enrichment is insufficient for use in nuclear weapons. Iran's enriched uranium is its main bargaining chip in the diplomatic negotiations that the US walked away from. Iran was assessed by the US intelligence community to not be developing nuclear weapons.
Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorist groups. The key word being “state”. There are many well known terrorist groups that are not sponsored by Iran.
standardUser 20 hours ago [-]
Iran was willing to "come to a diplomatic negotiation" before Israel pre-emptively and unilaterally attacked. In fact, Iran and the US had found a diplomatic solution before Trump tore it up and promised to get a better deal (and then repeatedly failed to do so).
Buttons840 20 hours ago [-]
> Iran is the foremost sponsor of terrorism.
How much does Iran spend sponsoring terrorism?
dakiol 12 hours ago [-]
And yet the only country in the history of humankind that has dropped not one but two nuclear bombs: the usa.
So tired of american bullshit.
fatbird 20 hours ago [-]
Iran did come to a diplomatic solution: the JCPOA [0]. Unfortunately, it was Obama who did it, so Trump tore it up in his first term. Why would Iran believe that any diplomatic outcome is meaningful?
Why must we stop Iran's terrorism? Their terrorism is directed at Israel, not America.
We can in fact just as easily support Iran's attacks against Israel. No reason to pick either side.
Right now the American people are coming to the consensus that Israel are the bad guys. Everybody under 50 already recognizes that, purely based on the thousands of Palestinian toddlers they see on Instagram that Israel kills and injures (the popular post today on Instagram is of a toddler with his legs severed). And the people over 50 will eventually die off, causing Israel's base of support to disappear.
There is no hope of Israel's permanent existence. We should remove our support for Israel immediately and prepare for the long term.
OfficeChad 11 hours ago [-]
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cloverich 18 hours ago [-]
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afroboy 12 hours ago [-]
You literally comparing the genocide happening to what rebels did?
tehjoker 22 hours ago [-]
they are trying to cut off chinas oil, settle a score, and defend "greater israel"
they are also punishing iran for selling oil in their national currency
imperialism run amok
thinkcontext 20 hours ago [-]
If they wanted to disrupt China's oil wouldn't they have hit the main export terminal on Kharg Island? More generally, you don't think its likely that, regardless of what you think of Israel, their main motivation is they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
tehjoker 18 hours ago [-]
> If they wanted to disrupt China's oil wouldn't they have hit the main export terminal on Kharg Island?
They aren't ready to directly start that war. They are trying to cut off the alliances first. Iran is a much smaller country (90M vs over a billion) with a lot of oil. Conveniently, Iran is already so dehumanized many Americans don't even recognize their rights to sovereignty.
> their main motivation is they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
No. They have been trying to attack Iran since the revolution. It's similar to how Cuba embarrassed America and was never forgiven. If Iran wanted a weapon they'd have one. However, these attacks may force Iran to get one because countries with nuclear weapons appear to actually have sovereignty. Iran of course retains the possibility of making one, hoping that will have the same effect, but it appears that doesn't do it.
FridayoLeary 21 hours ago [-]
Oil for starters. Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east. By proxy they are participating in every conflict.
A nuclear iran would be completely intolerable, never mind that their regime might just be lunatic enough to use them.
Add that war is bad for the whole world.
So the us benefits that it protects her economic (and strategic) interests in the ME, which are real and extremely important, at the low cost of a limited air campaign.
There are further moral arguments, but i'm answering your question in the most direct way.
twixfel 11 hours ago [-]
Israel is the principal destabilising element in the Middle East. It cannot even be argued at this point. It's them, the Israelis.
FridayoLeary 7 hours ago [-]
That is true in much the same way that the UK caused ww2 by refusing to make peace with the Germans in 1940. Or the soviets for selfishly resisting their invasion attempt.
Israel doesn't start any wars, it just finishes them. Hamas, hezbolla, syria, yemen and iran started up with Israel for no good reason. So they end up with a bloody nose. That's on them.
twixfel 7 hours ago [-]
Israel is committing genocide in Gaza as we speak and is expanding settlements more and more in the West Bank. The end game of the Israelis is very clearly complete ethnic cleansing. Israel is no victim here, it's a settler colonialist state that happens to be successful in being a settler colonialist state.
> Hamas, hezbolla, syria, yemen and iran started up with Israel for no good reason
If the UN decided to put a country for the Roma in the middle of India, how do you think that turn out? Very well or very badly? Is it surprising that everything turned out so badly in the ME with regards Israel? Seems obvious to me that putting a new country in the middle of a colony just as said colony is gaining independence seems like a shit idea?
Simply put, the very creation of Israel was fundamentally destabilising. We basically torpedoed our relations with the entire Islamic world (and especially the Arab world) just for the sake of some mostly (at that time) European colonists in Israel (who later became Israelis). That was retarded as shit. Say what you like about how good it was for the Israelis, but for us that was shit geopolitics, shit realpolitik, and a shit deal. Israel has now, rather predictably, become an ethnofascist state run by a (war)criminal. And we enabled them the whole way. And for what??? How exactly has anyone in the West actually benefited from this? It was clearly good for Israel and for Israelis, but how have we benefited from this???
FridayoLeary 4 hours ago [-]
i actually hate it when people pull the victim card and i can't stand apologists either but happily i have a very pragmatic answer;
the West benefits from israel that at least one country in the region isn't an authoritarian hellhole and actually contributes to the global economy beyond just providing petrol.
You might resent
it but that's the truth.
twixfel 57 minutes ago [-]
That's my point though, that's not pragmatic in the slightest. It would be ruthlessly pragmatic to favour the 400M Arabs 2B Muslims over the 10M Israelis. The Israeli economy is 0.5% of global GDP.
> region isn't an authoritarian hellhole
It's colonising the West Bank, committing genocide in Gaza, is led by a (war)criminal... Israel is arguably worse than many of its neighbours. I honestly don't care how good gay people have it in Tel Aviv when they're simultaneously committing genocide in Gaza or settling the West Bank like it's 1899. And yeah Israel is a democracy but they use their democratic choice to vote for a war criminal who's in bed with the settlers and other theocratic extremists. So Israel is really no better than many of its neighbours and arguably worse than many of them. And it's only getting worse, the Israelis are only becoming crazier and more extreme. And now they've got the US into a war with Iran. Sorry, 0.5% of GDP: not fucking worth it.
komali2 20 hours ago [-]
It's seeming more and more like Israel, which propped up Hamas for example, is the principal destabilizing element in the region, and therefore really it's America, which spearheaded the original overthrow of Iranian democracy, alongside all its other middle eastern meddling for the last fifty years.
shihab 21 hours ago [-]
> Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east
Says Israel, the nation who tore up every single international laws, directly led campaign against UN and ICC, and whose right-wing (ones in power now) have been dreaming about a Greater Israel that threatens territorial integrity of like 10 different ME countries.
34679 21 hours ago [-]
>Oil
If we want their oil, we can buy it like reasonable people do. What you're referring to is armed robbery.
>Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east
Is this a joke? The country that has not started any wars in its 300 year existence is not the "destabilizing element". That would be the country that has attacked Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran this year alone.
amluto 20 hours ago [-]
This is a strange comparison. Iran funds the Houthis, for example, who commit plenty of acts of war. And if you’re talking about starting wars, it’s worth noting that the present war in Gaza was started by Hamas. (I’m making no statement about whether the actions of either side or justified — I’m just pointing out that, in the present shooting war, the first shots were fired by Hamas, not Israel.)
34679 10 hours ago [-]
You ignore decades of aggression and occupation in Gaza, along with the 4 other countries Israel has decided to launch wars against this year. "But Hamas" is not a convincing argument.
amluto 6 hours ago [-]
I’m not ignoring anything. The situation in Gaza and elsewhere has been horrible for decades. Israel has imposed various forms of nastiness on Gaza, and I imagine that Israel’s government and many of its people saw some of that nastiness (heavy handed restrictions on imports to Gaza for example) as necessary, since Hamas quite regularly converted whatever materials they could into weapons to fire across the border into Israel. Meanwhile, I imagine that Hamas, and many of the people of Gaza, saw that as necessary because Israel treated them poorly. It was a catch-22. Meanwhile, Iran most definitely interfered heavily from the sidelines, and I imagine that Iran’s government had reasons that seemed valid to them.
The situation was and remains unstable, and the factors that made it unstable were did not come from just one place. And you don’t have to look hard to find acts of war initiated by multiple different parties in the area.
I think that claiming that any one country “decided to launch wars” against multiple other parties ignores a whole lot of complexity.
FridayoLeary 21 hours ago [-]
You misunderstood me. I was talking about oil from the other gulf states. About 25 percent of the global oil supply goes through the straight of Hormuz. If iran were to disrupt that it would be disastrous for obvious reasons.
It's logical for the West to work to prevent that from being a possibility.
Iran/persia is far older then 300 years old. But again you somehow missed the point. I was talking about the current 40 year old regime, which while not having directly started any wars, have since the beginning declared their intentions to do so against America and Israel.
Really you are being deliberately obtuse.
34679 10 hours ago [-]
>I was talking about the current 40 year old regime
Oh, and how did it come to power?
cedws 20 hours ago [-]
So is that the end of Iran’s nuclear programme, or is there more to it?
giantg2 20 hours ago [-]
They're committed. They'll rebuild. Just as Stuxnet just delayed things.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
Paper are committed to stop them it seems as well.
hotmeals 18 hours ago [-]
Terminator Skynet rules, they just delayed it.
swagasaurus-rex 20 hours ago [-]
This is just another square in my world war three bingo board. Sits pretty close to breaking the nuclear taboo square.
PeterHolzwarth 20 hours ago [-]
A country doesn't acquire nukes to use them. They acquire them to freeze specific layers of conflict. Actually using them among peers invites annihilation.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
Statistics says even if it’s true, unintended use probability sky rockets risking nuclear winter.
PeterHolzwarth 18 hours ago [-]
It turns out (and I didn't realize this until I looked back into it just a few years ago) that the 70s/80s concept of nuclear winter is discredited and believed not to be something that would arise from a global thermonuclear holocaust.
This is the end of any hope. Iran will now do everything in its power to get one. And it has all the skills it needs.
Refinement keeps getting easier.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
They've been doing anything in their power to get nuclear weapons for decades! This isn't some new trend that just occurred to them last week.
20 hours ago [-]
kjkjadksj 5 hours ago [-]
Anytime Trump says he ‘may or may not’ do something just bet the farm on him doing it. He can’t bluff without telegraphing the whole move.
hereme888 6 hours ago [-]
Turns out credible Nations have their red lines.
- Russia warned NATO for decades to not keep coming closer.
- Israel kept warning the world it would directly attack Iran if they kept getting closer to a Nuke.
- Trump warned Iran, and followed through on his warnings.
- The Iranian regime kept telling the world they wanted the genocide of Jews and attack Americans.
The demented Iranian leaders kept feeding hypnotic battle-cries to their military troops about taking down some of the most technologically advanced nations. They just got a reality check.
duxup 20 hours ago [-]
Is there an end to this?
The US actually ends Iran's nuclear program, they quit trying and obey ... because we bombed them?
Most of the recent middle east history doesn't seem to ever end as much as just go through a continuous cycle of violence creating more of what the folks condoning violence claim they're preventing.
twelve40 20 hours ago [-]
fwiw they do seem to have wiped out a bunch of opponents recently, some weakened to the point of giving up, others wiped out entirely. ever since the so-called "arab spring" the trend has been pretty steady.
siltcakes 19 hours ago [-]
What do you think all of the children of parents murdered by Israel will do? There will be much stronger resistance in the future.
twelve40 17 hours ago [-]
I wonder that too, with Gaza with the current approach the only endgame seems to be to either just kill everyone or to displace every single person somewhere else, but if those children continue to have living conditions of animals, their resistance will be of no consequence. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but i think this is not inaccurate unfortunately.
dudefeliciano 14 hours ago [-]
preventive genocide
cryptozeus 20 hours ago [-]
Iraq completely shut down post war so yeh its possible
jjk166 19 hours ago [-]
We fought a war against Iraq, conducted no fly zone operations over them for 12 years, fought another war, occupied them for 9 years, left and came back less than 3 years later for another 7 year long military operation against the terrorist group that filled the power vacuum. We still have about 2500 troops stationed in Iraq.
FuckButtons 18 hours ago [-]
We still have 55k in Japan and 24k in Korea, what exactly is your point? 2500 troops for a military the size of the US is a rounding error.
jjk166 17 hours ago [-]
Thank you for the additional examples of things not simply shutting down after a quick conflict. Lasting peace requires decades of military involvement. That is my point.
enlightenedfool 18 hours ago [-]
All that is supported by the American public buying defense stocks. Just new war strategies when party in power changes.
baobun 20 hours ago [-]
It's a completely different story. The roots and branches of Iran and its current leadership go deeper and wider on a different level. Saddam had nothing in comparison. Hamas would be a cakewalk in comparison and that's apparently still going.
Hard to see this being achievable over a just a couple of years if at all.
vFunct 19 hours ago [-]
Iraq wasn't a populist movement. Iran is.
reaperducer 20 hours ago [-]
Just yesterday I was wondering when the last time was that the Middle East had a period of peace. I know it hasn't been in my lifetime.
jordanb 20 hours ago [-]
Not since the Ottomans picked the wrong side in WWI.
vdupras 20 hours ago [-]
One question I have on my mind is: what side will they pick in WWIII?
greenavocado 20 hours ago [-]
It was getting pretty quiet leading up to the moment Assad was deposed.
jjk166 19 hours ago [-]
Assad was deposed more than a year after the start of the current Israel/Gaza flare up, which has included conflict in Lebanon and Yemen. He was also deposed nearly 14 years into the Syrian Civil War.
pjc50 16 hours ago [-]
Shortly before the assassination of Rabin?
jordanb 20 hours ago [-]
Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. That was the assessment of Trump's own government back in March, according to testimony of his national security advisor under oath before congress.
We knew about these sites because they have been under IAEA supervision for many years.
The smart thing for Iran to do at this point is do what Israel did: not submit to any arms control and develop their own weapons in secret. Clearly this is the only way to be safe when people in Tel Aviv and Washington are openly discussing the "Libya solution."
dralley 19 hours ago [-]
This is grammar-hacking and misleading.
According to the IAEA, Iran has around 400kg of 60% enriched Uranium. Nobody disputes this. There is zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 5% for civilian purposes, and zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 20% for non-bomb purposes (naval ship reactors typically use higher enrichment to avoid refueling and increase power density). That's enough Uranium to build around 10 bombs if fully enriched. They've done work on designing the actual bomb itself, too, and there's very little dispute about that either.
They have a nuclear weapons program. What Iran hasn't done, or there's no evidence of them having done, is actually start putting one together. But many of the prerequisites to do so are in place, though people dispute exactly how long it would take them to pull it off once they decided to do so.
throwworhtthrow 19 hours ago [-]
Gaining the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon is not the same thing as assembling one.
Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, March 2025:
"the IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program." [1]
Please explain how "Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program" is grammar hacking the above quote.
If you're actively doing the research and design required to build a nuclear weapon, and you're enriching uranium for the purpose of building a nuclear weapon, you have a nuclear weapons program. Whether you're actually physically assembling one immediately or not.
You wouldn't argue that the Manhattan Project wasn't a "real" nuclear weapons program until they started physically building the prototype.
throwworhtthrow 5 hours ago [-]
I think our discussion hinges on the definition of "program". I agree that Iran was attempting to reduce its breakout time.
"doing the research and design required to build a nuclear weapon" ... "enriching uranium for the purpose of building a nuclear weapon"
Gabbard says "Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons," but if there was knowledge they were actually building a nuclear weapon, she would have said so.
I could believe, but haven't seen claimed, that Iran was doing R&D in order to shorten the time between deciding they want an atomic bomb and having one completed. Or perhaps to have a second-order deterrent ("we could make a bomb") not a first order deterrent ("we have a bomb"). I think it's a big difference from actually trying to make one. Maybe you disagree on that point.
csomar 18 hours ago [-]
I think his point is: you knew about this 60% because we have visibility into their plants. But if we didn't, we probably have less of an idea of what is going on there.
TiredOfLife 14 hours ago [-]
They also have the delivery mechanism. A huge ballistic missile program.
einpoklum 16 hours ago [-]
> There is zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 5% for civilian purposes,
This is grossly incorrect: Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment for decades - and the west (and even the not-west) has been working to counter it the whole time.
Iran is considered a bellicose enemy in much of the middle east. A nuclear-armed Iran would quickly lead to the rest of the middle east pursing their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran.
A nuclear armed Iran leads to rapid nuclear proliferation throughout the middle east.
noufalibrahim 17 hours ago [-]
Indeed.
I remember an old interview of Robert Fisk where in which his analysis was that the only way to stay safe from attacks like this was to have a nuclear weapon.
I can't think of any other way. Their rhetoric is needlessly belligerent but it doesn't seem like there's anything they can do to guarantee their own safety.
greenavocado 20 hours ago [-]
Considering the fact that many US congressmen openly fly the flag of Israel in and around their congressional offices and openly proclaim absolute commitment to this foreign entity, there is no end in sight to the direct interference in US politics and subsequent military intervention and aid supporting these people while our country is sucked dry and our soldiers are ordered to die fighting in their wars.
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ujkhsjkdhf234 11 hours ago [-]
Before the election, I had conservatives telling me that Trump is anti-war and the world will be more stable under him. The war in Ukraine he promised to end is still ongoing, Gaza is still being bombed to nothing, and now US is kicking off war against Iran. I don't understand how you all keep falling for it.
BerlinKebab 3 hours ago [-]
All of you shit lefties asking about "why did the US just do this?" should be deported to Iran / Gaza immetiadely.
As a Libertarian Central European, i appreciate these attacks. Fuck Mullahs and Muslims.
Bostonian 12 hours ago [-]
Trump Meets the Moment on Iran
The President bombs three nuclear sites to spare the world from an intolerable risk.
Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
June 22, 2025 1:01 am ET
President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites on Saturday helped rid the world of a grave nuclear threat and was a large step toward restoring U.S. deterrence. It also creates an opportunity for a more peaceful Middle East, if the nations of the region will seize it.
“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Mr. Trump said Saturday night. He made clear Iran brought this on itself. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying ‘death to America,’ ‘death to Israel.’ They’ve been killing our people,” he said, citing 1,000 Americans killed by Iran-supplied roadside bombs and other means. A nuclear Iran was a perilous threat to Israel, the nearby Arab states, and America.
Mr. Trump gave Iran every chance to resolve this peacefully. The regime flouted his 60-day deadline to make a deal. Then Israel attacked, destroying much of the nuclear program and achieving air supremacy, and still the President gave Iran another chance to come to terms. The regime wouldn’t even abandon domestic uranium enrichment. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted a bomb more than peace.
Military conflict is often unpredictable and the potential for Iranian retaliation can’t be dismissed, no matter how self-destructive it would be. Iran and its Iraqi proxies have threatened U.S. regional bases with missile fire, but Mr. Trump warned that “future attacks will be far greater” if Iran goes down that road. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and brought military assets into the region. If the regime values self-preservation, it will give up its nuclear ambitions and stand down.
Much of the press has fixated on the idea that Mr. Trump has now joined or even started a conflict. But Iran has been waging regional and terrorist war for decades. It’s as likely that he has helped end it. Leaving Iran with a hardened nuclear enrichment facility after an Israeli military campaign would have been a recipe for maximum danger, all but asking Iran to sprint to a bomb.
At the same time, the Israeli campaign yielded a unrivaled strategic opportunity. Suddenly, Iran’s airspace was uncontested. Its substantial ballistic-missile program was degraded. Several of its proxies had been bludgeoned into silence. Its nuclear program had been reduced to a few key sites, one of which only U.S. weapons could be trusted to penetrate.
The opportunity to act and the danger of standing pat may have proved decisive. We would say that they left Mr. Trump little choice, except U.S. Presidents always have a choice, and have been known to kick the can down the road. To his credit, Mr. Trump didn’t, hitting the Fordow enrichment site as well as Natanz and Isfahan. This shows the President wanted to leave no doubt about Iran’s nuclear program and take it all down.
Good for him for meeting the moment, despite the doubts from part of his political base. The isolationists were wrong at every step leading up to Saturday, and now they are again predicting another Iraq, if not a road to World War III. Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America, which is his first obligation as President.
“History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night. Mr. Trump thanked him and said “we worked as a team.” The Israelis, who proved their strategic value as an ally, would like to complete the mission by destroying what remains of Iran’s missile infrastructure. They deserve a green light, especially as those missiles are threatening U.S. bases.
The chatter about TACO—“Trump always chickens out”—will now quiet down, but the more significant reassessment has to do with U.S. foreign policy. The Obamaites of the left, and lately of the right, counseled that the world had to bow to Iranian intimidation. The best we could hope for was a flimsy deal that bribed Iran with billions and left open its path to a bomb. They were wrong.
The irony being that Iran must get nukes now. It is readily apparent they cannot defend themselves conventionally. Nukes are the ultimate deterrence. This wouldn’t be happening if they had a credible, survivable nuclear deterrence. QED this forces Iran to acquire nukes.
paxys 21 hours ago [-]
Ukraine and Iran have showed that if a country doesn't have nukes they don't have sovereignty.
lesuorac 20 hours ago [-]
I think Pakistan is the example you're looking for.
US spend a decade fighting in Afghanistan and 0 years in Pakistan despite UBL being in Pakistan.
ExaltedPunt 20 hours ago [-]
Osama Bin Laden could have turned up outside the White house to hand himself in and they still would have gone into Afghanistan and Iraq.
9/11 was used as an excuse to for these regime change wars. There are old videos where they were talking about doing this in the 2000s.
csomar 18 hours ago [-]
North Korea is another example.
ericmay 21 hours ago [-]
Well, it’s not really that simple. Plenty of countries are still sovereign without nuclear weapons.
And even nuclear armed nations aren’t exactly able to use their weapons to devastate an opponents military - see Ukraine and Russia.
dkjaudyeqooe 21 hours ago [-]
Thats because they have friends with nukes (or thought they did).
tgv 11 hours ago [-]
Iran also has friends wit nukes: Russian and China. And China does care: it needs a secure oil supply.
paxys 21 hours ago [-]
Which country? Do you think Canada is sovereign? Do you think it will be able to defend itself if Trump gives the military an order to make them the 51st state by any means necessary?
ericmay 21 hours ago [-]
Well, Afghanistan defended itself for a bit. As did Vietnam, as clear examples. Neither possess nuclear weapons.
Today countries as various as Brazil and Australia are independent, sovereign nations. Even Ukraine which was invaded by nuclear-armed Russia is still sovereign and fighting. Iran for that matter still has its sovereignty, they just lost some military assets.
nemothekid 21 hours ago [-]
Canada is sovereign because of its proximity and interconnection with US. If your economy is large enough, you can "nuke" your opponents by using mutually assured poverty.
But I largely agree, if you aren't a giant economy and you don't have nukes - then if the US or Russia accesses you of building nukes, you need to start building nukes ASAP.
jordanb 20 hours ago [-]
> Do you think Canada is sovereign
Well the prime minister who was elected promising not to bend the knee to Trump has bent the knee to trump.
I was looking forward to an interesting argument, sadly it's just a very badly written opinion piece.
ericmay 20 hours ago [-]
Ok and so now Canada isn’t a sovereign country? That would be astonishing news to Canadians everywhere! Can someone tell them??!
ekianjo 21 hours ago [-]
Taiwan has no nukes, and still has not been invaded by China.
hajile 8 hours ago [-]
TSMC is an economic nuke and not just by accident. The Taiwanese intentionally tried with several industries it heavily subsidized to find one where it could make itself so valuable that other countries (with nukes) would be compelled to protect it (potentially with nukes).
amanaplanacanal 20 hours ago [-]
Taiwan has a good friend with nukes though.
ekianjo 18 hours ago [-]
Most countries have good friends with nukes. Iran included.
jopsen 3 hours ago [-]
Does Iran have friends or are they more like business relationships?
Even despite Trump, I think the US and many western countries have actual friends that would show up if bad things happened.
anonnon 13 hours ago [-]
The US isn't nuking China over Taiwan, and China maintains an explicit "no first use" policy.
20 hours ago [-]
pixelpoet 20 hours ago [-]
I don't expect this to stay true for very long :(
20 hours ago [-]
have-a-break 21 hours ago [-]
Next would be manufacturing your own smartphones. Sad that not making weapons and enslaving your own populace makes you subject to external countries.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
Russia was the first nuclear armed state to lose territory to a retired comedian.
busterarm 21 hours ago [-]
That is until some country proves that developing nukes means you no longer have a country.
It looks like it might even be Iran.
arandomusername 21 hours ago [-]
Iran will definitely continue pursuing uranium enrichment. IRIB claims that the enriched uranium stockpile was moved away from those locations - which makes sense, so they probably didn't lose their stockpile. They will build new enrichment sites, which means bombing again.
tmnvix 21 hours ago [-]
I think it's too early to say that the Fordow facility has definitely been destroyed. So far I've only heard Trump make the claim and I'm not inclined to take his word for it.
arandomusername 21 hours ago [-]
True, Trump's words are worthless. I'm hearing that the Iranian state media is claiming no irreversible damage at Fordow / only entry points were targeted - but ofcourse that doesn't carry much weight either.
tmnvix 21 hours ago [-]
FWIW one take on all of this that I have considered is that Israel and the US have been looking for an out that allows them to claim to have successfully achieved their objectives. I wouldn't be surprised if this attack was unsuccessful but won't be followed up if that becomes apparent later.
Israel only just (before this US bombing) claimed they had set Iran's nuclear program back by 2-3 years. I found the timing of the announcement curious.
This after suffering extensive damage from direct missile strikes (Haifa port/refinery, Mossad headquarters, Wiezmann institute, C4I/cyber defense, etc). I think the missile strikes have been much more damaging than expected and understandably under-reported. Weapons expert Ted Postol of MIT claims Israel's missile defense is only intercepting around 5%.
I think Israel will be very unhappy if things continue to escalate without further US involvement. Depending on how Iran retaliates against the US, further involvement might not be forthcoming. We've seen seen Iran attack a US base in Jordan without causing escalation from the US. Could expect something similar.
cbsks 20 hours ago [-]
> Weapons expert Ted Postol of MIT claims Israel's missile defense is only intercepting around 5%
Do you have a link to this? I’m curious to read more.
weizman - bombed wing that contains cancer and rare deceases research labs. amazing
C4I/cyber defense. missed. hit soroka hospital.
Glyptodon 21 hours ago [-]
I've wondered how much of a deterrent dirty bombs are or aren't outside of nukes and curious if they might be in the cards for retaliatory moves by Iran.
klipt 20 hours ago [-]
My understanding is those don't accomplish much militarily since they just give people cancer 30 years later. So you commit a war crime for no military advantage, then what? The other country just hits back with a dirty bomb of their own?
Glyptodon 6 hours ago [-]
My mental model does assume they must have plutonium in a meaningful quantity rather than just uranium for a dirty bomb to be remotely "effective" and I have no idea if that's even plausible. And if they do I'm not sure exactly what would lead to a dirty bomb over attempting an actual nuclear device.
But even a not very effective permutation of a dirty bomb seems like it could lead to headlines that look more "positive" for their leadership. (IE create outsized headlines.)
deepsquirrelnet 21 hours ago [-]
The other irony being it starting out with claiming a country has WMDs on questionable evidence.
I hope the US can use hindsight right now to guide the next decisions.
azurezyq 19 hours ago [-]
Then it might be better that the country really has WMD.
Otherwise uncle Sam will let you know you have them
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what you mean - Iran has been full-tilt pursuing nuclear weapons for decades. And America, its partners, and even its definitely-not-partners, have been working to counter that the whole time.
Remember that in much of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy.
hajile 7 hours ago [-]
This is simply not true.
Iran's religious dictator issued a Fatwa declaring nukes haram. This is why they've consistently stopped at 60% enrichment.
In a religious cult, everything rides on the leadership. He can't just come out and change his mind. He must have a very definitive reason that doesn't disagree with the reasoning in the previous Fatwa. His only real out is an existential threat where threatening a nuke becomes a tool to preserve lives.
Israel and the US have now given him that out. It remains to be seen if he actually takes it.
kurtis_reed 20 hours ago [-]
Israel would say if Iran just stops attacking and threatening Israel then they wouldn't need to defend themselves.
NekkoDroid 17 hours ago [-]
As controversial of a figure he is, the Hasanabi Doctrine at play.
anonnon 13 hours ago [-]
> The irony being that Iran must get nukes now. It is readily apparent they cannot defend themselves conventionally
If Iran is willing to use its nuclear weapons in response to this (limited, conventional air strikes), then that's a clear demonstration they aren't rational actors and can't be trusted with nuclear weapons.
21 hours ago [-]
smashah 21 hours ago [-]
Precisely, Trump could only do this terrorist attack because he knows for certain that Iran does not have nukes. Nukes are an abomination to the Islamic Rules of War - which is why there is/was a long standing fatwa against it.
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
Bombing a mountain spinning uranium around to find the right isotopes to make death spheres is an act of terrorism against uranium spinning around.
smashah 6 hours ago [-]
Vampires lack a reflection.
selimthegrim 21 hours ago [-]
I guess this fatwa doesn’t apply to Pak Army?
heavyset_go 19 hours ago [-]
Why would Sunni leaders adhere to another sect's fatwas?
abletonlive 21 hours ago [-]
You don't seem to understand that the government of Iran isn't going to exist in about 2 weeks. This was their only leverage in negotiation. Trump is about to make a speech in 30 minutes. It's over for them. The US does not just send B2 bombers without knowing it's going to work. Israeli intelligence and bombing for the past week was setting up for this final act.
runako 21 hours ago [-]
> The US does not just send B2 bombers without knowing it's going to work.
I'm old enough to remember when we (the US) ran this exact playbook, except the last letter was 'q' instead of 'n'.
Spoiler: the B-2 played a part in both of the big wars we lost in the last couple of decades. The problem hinges on the definition of "work": yes, the bombs hit what they are aimed at. No, that does not result in operational success without a coherent theory of victory.
abletonlive 21 hours ago [-]
I'm old enough to remember that Iraq had its entire government toppled in about 3 weeks after the US invasion so this is not the example you think it is lol. You conveniently redefined what we are talking about. You must not remember saddam getting dragged through the streets.
runako 20 hours ago [-]
I do remember all of that.
What happened next? Did it go to plan? Nearly to plan? Close enough to plan that one could kind of squint and give partial credit? Worse than that?
Did the US lose more lives in Iraq (and kill more Iraqis) before or after "Mission Accomplished"?
abletonlive 20 hours ago [-]
you don't have to squint to see reality.
saddam is gone and there was a regime change.
that's it. that's what we were talking about.
no need to go into other areas of the conversation that didn't exist before you came along to insert some reason why you feel justified defending a regime that oppresses women through a "morality police" force. i don't care why you think they should be allowed to have nukes. i'm sure you can argue for it all day. you don't need to get philosophical about what is "winning" or "working".
if you can't agree on objective reality and what we are discussing, we have nothing to discuss. move on
runako 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, the regime changed. Objectively, that is true. We agree on that. And then...
the US lost nearly 5,000 service members in Iraq. We are still paying for the $3 trillion the war cost. Americans derived no benefit whatsoever from the change of regime in Iraq, a country that had not attacked us.
As an American who lives in a US city not currently under attack by Iran, it is reasonable to ask why we should sign up for this again. This has absolutely zero with defending Iran. How they manage their domestic affairs has no bearing on me.
If there is a case to be made that we should curtail our urgent domestic policy goals in favor of another war thousands of miles from the US, it has not been made.
My concern is this: I have no dog in this fight, but now I am going to be asked to pay for it. And it working like it "worked" in Iraq is my primary concern on that front.
Isolating the first 3 weeks or so from an 8-year war to say that it "worked" is obviously a special kind of sophistry. I'm not sure what purpose is served by such an analysis, honestly.
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
Don’t forget the $20T in entitlement spending/debt that the boomers paid themselves. War is small beans!
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
And I'm old enough to remember the previous war with Iraq which left Iraq's government intact, and the 12 years of no fly zone operations before attempt 2. I also remember attempt 2 costing around $3 Trillion.
fatbird 20 hours ago [-]
I remember that being caused by a massive US ground invasion, not by sustained bombing. Has the US spent the last six months building up ground forces on Iran's borders?
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
It only works if you think victory was hitting the target.
siltcakes 21 hours ago [-]
They can continue to bomb Israel at will. These minimal attacks will not stop that and there will be no regime change.
Indeed. You'll be wrong but I doubt you'll have the integrity to discover why you're wrong.
fuckyah 18 hours ago [-]
[dead]
catlifeonmars 20 hours ago [-]
What makes you think a ground invasion is likely?
Waterluvian 21 hours ago [-]
When I look at Russia invading Ukraine, and I see how Israel is behaving, and I listen to the American president talking about annexing my country, I can see why a country might believe it needs nuclear weapons.
Whether this is good or bad is something people can discuss. But I think it’s fleetingly difficult for me to see any sort of righteous high ground these days.
21 hours ago [-]
bagels 21 hours ago [-]
With Trump in office, everybody should be seeking them out, Canada included.
Waterluvian 21 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what wise national defense policy would be. But I can't argue with anyone who might reach that conclusion.
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
If they don’t understand math and risk, they should. The US nearly nuked itself multiple times during development and learning. It will happen when everyone else races to build them.
hajile 7 hours ago [-]
That was when the research wasn't stable.
Any nuclear scientist today knows WAY more about the do's and don'ts of creating nukes than we did when muddling through the Manhattan project. Making basic uranium nukes is time consuming, but nothing too special.
The hard part (by far) is making the missiles to launch those nukes and hit the target. That part is so hard that we've continually failed to replace the Minuteman III which was designed before we even landed on the moon.
Waterluvian 18 hours ago [-]
Yes, I hear nukes are dangerous.
21 hours ago [-]
ivape 21 hours ago [-]
I mean if Russia can just walk into Ukraine, why can't Israel terrorize Iran from the sky. Why can't China just waltz into Taiwan?
The thing about Trump's isolationism is that it's actually a passive aggressive position. Imagine you know which kids in your classroom are likely to fight and you take a policy of "I won't stop it if it happens", that's basically telling some of the kids "go ahead", so how is this isolationist?
Now, literally joining in on the fight when the kids pop off, that is uniquely Trumpian.
komali2 20 hours ago [-]
In the case of Taiwan, because there's not really a path to victory from straight up invasion that accomplishes anything really meaningful, unless Xi is down for his legacy to be 5 million deaths and the sudden burden of tens of millions of infrastructureless refugees that are apparently full throated PRC citizens now.
The PRC's only realistic hope is a soft power takeover which it seems mildly competent at progressing on. About to have a serious setback with the KMT recalls though.
nebula8804 19 hours ago [-]
I can only see China invading after SMIC has matched the capabilities of TSMC. China wouldn't need TSMC anymore and if the rest of the world' tech sectors collapse then sucks for them but not China.
hajile 7 hours ago [-]
If China ever succeeds in outmatching TSMC in both process and wafer output, Taiwan would have already lost as the big reason for defending them disappears.
anonnon 12 hours ago [-]
> American president talking about annexing my country
You country can't even be bothered to meet its 2% NATO obligation, and now you're talking about pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and not to deter Russia, but to threaten the US? Canada and Iran both show how dangerous having state-run media is.
Fraterkes 11 hours ago [-]
Check your carbon-monoxide detectors
twixfel 11 hours ago [-]
Jesus what nonsense. Russia isn't threatening to annex Canada, only the USA is. I don't understand this retarded American exceptionalism: we can threaten to annex you but you're not allowed to react or to care. I can't believe I used to look up to your country.
P.S. Fuck Russia too; we need to support Ukraine more.
anonnon 11 hours ago [-]
> Jesus what nonsense. Russia isn't threatening to annex Canada
Russia would simply take as much of Canada's arctic as it liked, right now, with or without Canada having nukes, if it weren't for the United States.
twixfel 11 hours ago [-]
OK, but it isn't threatening to do. America is. You see the difference?
lerp-io 18 hours ago [-]
moral of the story: if you don’t make the nuke to wipe everyone out fast enough, you will eventually get bombed and no amount of diplomacy will save you from game theory.
_heimdall 18 hours ago [-]
I do agree with the sentiment here, but "no amount of diplomacy" isn't really a description of Iran's government.
The Iranian government has frequently reference a goal of destroying Israel, a sovereign nation, and referred to the US in very disparaging (and biblical) terms. That doesn't justify direct attack, but it also isn't diplomatic.
azinman2 17 hours ago [-]
Disparaging? They literally chant death to America. Is that not also calling for its destruction?
lunarboy 17 hours ago [-]
I'm sure the decades of CIA meddling in the Middle East and endless wars had no effect on raising generations of US hatred. To hit someone, then call them dangerous when they say "I hate you" is real hero stuff
maximus-decimus 11 hours ago [-]
Okay so assuming the U.S. is 100% responsible for Iran wishing death on them, what do you think the U.S. should do? Let Iran make a nuclear weapon and nuke the U.S.? Or are you arguing Iran is harmless despite openly wishing death on the U.S.?
HEmanZ 9 hours ago [-]
Why in the world do you think they would use a nuke on the US? Why do you think they would use it at all? That is utter suicide. This is Iran, not ISIS (something a lot of Americans don’t know the difference between).
Their stated goal, and the only goal that makes any sense, is to use it for deterrence. Attacking any major power unprovoked like that would wipe them off the face of the earth. Just like if Israel tried to nuke Russia or something, it would be complete suicide. They know that without nuclear weapons to defend themselves, they will be conquered and the current regime will be overthrown, it’s only a matter of time. They don’t have the military power to resist being conquered by the major world powers. But some nuclear bomb would be enough to deter conquest (as it would have probably deterred Russia from attacking the Ukrain).
I think Israel has legitimate fears here, but with enough military capacity and a strong alliance with the US attacking them would also be suicide. Attacking basically anyone around them would be suicide.
Get your news from somewhere other than Fox. This isn’t “evil bad guys want to kill everyone”. This is “theocraric dictatorship doesn’t want to get conquered/overthrown by a major world power”.
What the US was doing before Israel blew up its efforts.
The idea that iran has any interest in using nuclear weapons is so absurd that it's incredible any one could take this propaganda seriously. Every relevant country has at least second strike capabilities against Iran, so it would be suicidal in the extreme -- it's also highly likely that the handful of nukes they'd have would be mostly intercepted. They haven't even developed second strike themselves, so they'd almost certainly lose any nuclear capacity on first attempted use. Iran's capacity for nuclear agression with nukes, is tiny.
Iran having a nuclear weapon would be one of the most stabilising outcomes in the middle east, as it would prevent israel (which is the most violent, destablising state in the region) from acting with impunity. This is why israel has, for 30 years, been complaining that iran is "months away" from a bomb, and why for 20 years its being trying to precipitate a war to drag the US into.
Iran having a nuclear weapon is the best possible outcome for global security, precisely because its the only configuration of events which prevents israel from waging wars of aggression on its neighbors (syria, iran, et al.).
Gareth321 10 hours ago [-]
> What the US was doing before Israel blew up its efforts.
So... nothing?
> The idea that iran has any interest in using nuclear weapons is so absurd that it's incredible any one could take this propaganda seriously.
When a country repeatedly calls for the genocide of nations and peoples, over decades and various leaders, and funds dozens of terrorist groups which carry out unspeakable acts of depravity and violence against said peoples, why on Earth would you think they don't mean it? Why would having more destructive power suddenly make them less violent? Your logic doesn't follow at all. It's clear you have little understanding of the various ways in which Iran has waged war on its neighbours over decades. Them having a nuke would merely enable them to become far more bold in their covert and overt attempts to cleans the world of their enemies.
mjburgess 10 hours ago [-]
> nothing
So signing treaties, negotiating, having mass inspections, economic cooperation -- this is nothing? As of 2015 the official policy of the US was reintegration of iran into the economic system; trump undid that briefly, but then adopted exactly the same policy until a month ago.
> why on Earth would you think they don't mean it?
It's disappoing how effectively people are propagandised into offensive action based on the words of foreign nations.
Look at what Regan said about the USSR and vice versa, rhetoric much more extreme. At the time people couldnt understand the incomprehensibly insane world-ending rhetoric. Now we have a coherent theory of why leaders do this -- which is that you want your enemies to believe you will engage in suicidal behaviour or your deterrence isnt effective.
Here iran has enough missiles to detroy israel, but if it uses enough of them, its quite likely israel would nuke iran. Israel is the roge state in the region who goes around trying to topple regeims, bomb embassies, etc. They are the nation everyone is trying to contain.
Iran's rhetroic, and it's amassing of arms is a containment strategy for israel. Israel needs to find it semi-plausible iran will attack, or else Iran is screwed -- because israel will attack.
Welome to the world of geopolitics, where defensive behaviour by other countries looks like offensive behaviour if you're poorly informed about the situation. It makes waging wars of aggression, like this one, trivially easy to engineer consent for. Oh well, its the US's own blood and treasure, go spend it if you wish.
Gareth321 9 hours ago [-]
> So signing treaties, negotiating, having mass inspections, economic cooperation -- this is nothing? As of 2015 the official policy of the US was reintegration of iran into the economic system; trump undid that briefly, but then adopted exactly the same policy until a month ago.
I was referring to this current round of sabre rattling, but if you're referring to the JCPOA, I should inform you that Iran agreed to monitoring and verification, not only under strictly restricted grounds. The deal did not give inspectors the right to freely roam. Access to military sites remained contentious and largely off limits. Iran never gave access to Parchin, for example. This meant Iran was free to continue their nuclear weapons development program - though of course in secret.
Further, the JCPOA unlocked $100B in frozen assets which the brutal dictator Ayatollah Khamenei immediately stole and used to cement his position of power. The JCPOA also lifted oil sanctions which further enriched Khamenei to the tune of $10-30B per year.
The JCPOA was commonly regarded as impotent and symbolic at best, and quite harmful at worst.
> Look at what Regan said about the USSR and vice versa, rhetoric much more extreme.
They both meant it. This is a crucial fact from the cold war. The world really was minutes away from nuclear war. I highly recommend reading the account of Stanislav Petrov [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov], a Russian lieutenant colonel, who in 1983 narrowly avoided nuclear war by heroically refusing to report an apparent missile launch by the U.S. During this period the U.S. formally developed the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine which automated nuclear launches in the event that no one was left alive to retaliate.
You use an example of two deadly serious adversaries willing to destroy the world as an example of something we should not fear?
mjburgess 9 hours ago [-]
They weren't willing to destroy the world. You do observe that sometimes one's own propaganda can backfire, esp. if its runs over years, and create a "middle management" layer of zaelots who arent aware it was for show.
So one quite important feature of stabre-ratting systems is that you don't have regieme-change instability where "lower tier zealots" who have been propagandised their whole lives suddenly take power -- because they, like the public, may be unaware it was just for show.
You're just repeating decades of US propaganda to me. I know it all. This was just a TV show put on to defend the rise of two empires, the US and the USSR -- the claims about ideology, world-destruction, communism, capitalism, etc. are all propangada. The goal the entire time, of both nations, was to expand their spheres of influence to each other's borders and to contain one another.
Here, the near entirity of iran's foreign policy is -- just like that of the US, USSR (and many other nations) -- a containment strategy for an highly militarised adversary. If iran took any other approach, israel would have invaded far earlier.
_heimdall 8 hours ago [-]
It would be a terrible strategy for Israel to attempt to invade Iran, regardless of what alternative approaches could have been taken in the past.
Israel would be outnumbered, fighting on enemy soil, and the logistics and supply chain would be insanely difficult to put in place and protect.
mjburgess 8 hours ago [-]
You cannot obtain regime change, nor end iran's nuclear capacity, without a ground invasion. Everyone involved knows this.
So either their state goals are lies, or their strategy is a losing one, or they anticipate a ground invasion.
Either way, the choice before israel/us is lose-lose.
But of course, it's imperative we take death threats very seriously, so just you know, err.. we.. err.. dont have to... err. dunno.
Of course that sentence should be, "it's imperative we pretend to take death threats seriously so that israel's ability to dominate the middle east through wars of aggression is maintained, even if that comes at the cost of the blood and treasure of the US"
_heimdall 7 hours ago [-]
Its safe to assume a state's public goals are a lie, especially during a war.
My point wasn't that their stated goals can be met without a ground invasion, it was that a ground invasion fought only by Israel will be extremely difficult for them to win, if not impossible.
I'm not sure what your point is about death threats, or what threats you're referring to. Trump has pretty directly threatened Khamenei. The threats I remember seeing from Iran are always vague and pointed mostly at a desire for the Israeli and US governments to die - though dangerous statements to make, I wouldn't consider those death threats.
Don't misread me here as defending Iran, both sides in a war are to blame and the history of this problem goes back decades.
mjburgess 7 hours ago [-]
I was referring to the other comment's comments that we need to take iranian threats seriously.
However, if israel's goals are a lie -- the question is what they're hoping to achieve. Maybe they thought the US had the capacity to take out iran's nuclear capability and would use it, from the air; or would gamble on that. I'm doubtful.
Or they think they can ramp up the escalation ladder to a degree where the US is involved in a full-blown war that wrecks iran as a functional state. This makes most sense.
The combined defensive capability of western powers may be enough to protect israel during such a conflict, whilst the US/israel can wage a much more sustained offensive campaign.
Either way, going around bombing iran -- civilian areas, oil infrastructure, media companies -- has only one aim: escalation. They are trying to provoke iran into ever more escalatory responses.
One has to square israel's actions with what they could plausibly aim to achieve. Everything points towards climbing an escalation ladder towards a US-backed destruction of iran as a functional state.
This will, of course, cost the US greatly. However there's very little evidence israel has any regard for US blood or treasure.
_heimdall 10 hours ago [-]
Unless I wildly misunderstand the meaning behind the "death to ___" phrase often used by Iranians, it is meant as a call against the foreign government not the people.
The Iraniansiranians, or at least the Iranian government, absolutely want the US and Israeli governments to fall, but when have they called for genocide?
mjburgess 9 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't try to analyse any sabre-ratting rhetoric by foreign leaders either way. But if you really want to: start with your own.
Google all the times the US leaders have threatened annihilation against foreign nations, threats vastly more credible as a global superpower.
One should never take words very seriously in geopolitics. They are 2/3rds designed for domestic populations, to propagandize them (esp. in democracies, which must lie to their publics), and 1/3rds lies for the other side.
Serious analysers of geopoltical strategy are only concerned with actions, capabilities and growing capabilities. And they are esp. uninterested in domestic propaganda.
Everyone in the US elite is extremely well-aware of this; by pointing to iranian rhetoric now they are just propagandizing american audiences to support a war of aggression which is, largely, against the interests of the US population.
Gareth321 9 hours ago [-]
* "Israel must be wiped off the map." -Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
* "Israel must be wiped off the map." -President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
* "The Zionist regime will perish in the not-so-far future." -Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
* "Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map." -General Hossein Salami
They have been clear and consistent in their intent. Whether it be rhetoric or their continued funding and training of various terrorist groups in the region and globally.
Lastly, I find the argument derisive and infantilising that they don't really mean "death" when they say "death to America/Israel/the West". We all understand what the word "death" means.
mjburgess 9 hours ago [-]
Perhaps when you're done with iran then, you can move on to all other nations whose leaders have wished destruction on their neighbours. You'll find that's approximately all nations to have ever existed. Preferably, you might start with your own.
inglor_cz 13 hours ago [-]
Neither of you are wrong. There are genuine reasons for hatred of the West in the Middle East, AND the Islamists are doing their best to whip up that hatred even more and weaponize it.
That said, "organic" hatred towards the US is much more common in the Arab world than in Iran. Smarter people who live under totalitarian regimes tend to become distrustful of the message that the regime goons are relentlessly pushing, and if that message is "Death to America", the underground reaction will be "America must be cool if the idiots up there hate it so much".
I saw the same with my own eyes in late-stage Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Regime propaganda is one thing, its effect on the people another. It usually works much less than expected.
14 hours ago [-]
mft_ 14 hours ago [-]
Who is “they”? A representative subset of the overall population, or a group of extremists, possibly performing for the cameras?
Iran was once an open and liberal country; the current government is generally very unpopular.
Just as Netanyahu‘s actions do not represent all Israelis, so the Iranian government does not represent all Iranians.
azinman2 8 hours ago [-]
They is the gov, along with some portion of the population.
_heimdall 4 hours ago [-]
That's a pretty broad net though. Is it the whole government you are talking about, or only certain positions?
And what is the actual percentage of the population you're implicating here? 5% vs 50% could make a huge difference.
Can you blame them. CIA overthrew the only democratic government they ever had, and replaced it with a dictator.
karmakurtisaani 15 hours ago [-]
Iran has actually been quite willing to negotiate. It has not withdrawn from the talks, it was the US that did it the last time under Trump.
Are you aware that Iran approved of US invasion of Iraq in the Gulf War? It even allowed the use of it's air space.
Are you aware that Iran was the only country excluded from the Madrid peace talks of 1991 between Israel and Palestine? To counter this exclusion, Iran strengthened it's ties with Hamas and Hizbollah.
Iran is not some insane theocracy seeking of everyone's destruction. The regime is bad for the people, but self-interested just as any other, and benefits very little from full exclusion.
_heimdall 11 hours ago [-]
I didn't say Iran has been unwilling to negotiate or that they haven't been diplomatic at all.
The prior comment I was replying to implied that the Iranians couldn't have been more diplomatic than they already have been.
That's simply untrue and ignores much of the rhetoric coming out from the Iranian government related to Israel and the US. More importantly, it ignores Iran's involvement with a handful of non-state militant groups in the region.
LAC-Tech 16 hours ago [-]
I do agree with the sentiment here, but "no amount of diplomacy" isn't really a description of Iran's government.
That's completely unfair to Iran. They had IAEA inspectors in their country and they were negotiating with the US (a nation who has put crippling sanctions on them).
Then a country that doesn't have IAEA inspectors bombed them, killing the people that very people who were negotiating with the US. Their message since than has been reasonable; "we won't negotiate while Israel is attacking us".
How much more diplomatic would you like them to be? They can't just roll over and take it, or they'll be finished.
crubier 15 hours ago [-]
> How much more diplomatic would you like them to be?
india/pakistan whitter on about it all the time. As did the french/english.
But, if you were near to a country that was busily invading neighbours, run by religious zealots, a huge military had a history of using allies to attack you and is obviously illegally playing with nuclear bombs what would you do?
The problem is, that describes both iran and israel.
LAC-Tech 13 hours ago [-]
How's your Persian?
"Marg Bar <noun" appears to a ritualistic phrase, meaning 'down with':
It's also worth pointing out that wanting Israel (the state) destroyed is not the same thing as wanting everyone who lives there to die. I'm glad the Third Reich was destroyed, I'm also glad the German people survived it.
karmakurtisaani 13 hours ago [-]
Let's retire this argument already. None of this rhetoric means anything until it's put to action, which Iran has never done. This is something the leaders say to gain popular support by acting like they have an enemy to fight. Similar to Trump claiming Mexico will pay for the wall.
os2warpman 11 hours ago [-]
>None of this rhetoric means anything until it's put to action, which Iran has never done.
Hezbollah.
karmakurtisaani 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but with that it doesn't matter what they say to their own people.
_heimdall 11 hours ago [-]
My point wasn't that they haven't practiced some level of diplomacy. I was commenting on the level with with the earlier comment spoke of their diplomacy, and the seeming implication that they couldn't have been more diplomatic.
Calling for death to America, speaking of desires for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, funding non-state militant actors in the region, etc are all acts that inflame and go counter to the diplomacy they were otherwise taking part in.
You're just making my point. Calling for the death of the US or Israeli governments goes against the comment I replied to which attempted to make a case that Iran has been as diplomatic as possible.
lerp-io 4 hours ago [-]
I wasn’t implying they were diplomatic as possible. I was simply suggesting that diplomacy will only get you so far. there is a threshold after which you simply need to have the power and resources to defend your nation from foreign adversaries with whatever means possible, one of which is nukes - presumably a relatively cheap option if u already have the R&D.
3 hours ago [-]
buyucu 12 hours ago [-]
The rhetoric coming from Iran is very mild compared to the ulta-religious venom coming from Tel Aviv.
BrandoElFollito 10 hours ago [-]
I was surprised to read that in Europe, the closest country to have nuclear weapons are the Netherlands (if they wanted to)
Apparently also Belgium , Italy, Turkey, Germany have the same type.
BrandoElFollito 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, but these are US nukes, under complete US control. US decides when and where to use them. In other words, these countries are launch sites for the US army.
What I had in mind are nukes under the jurisdiction of a country (such as France or UK in Europe)
When Trump dumped his support for NATO in Europe, everyone was looking at France to shield them and deter attacks. I was wondering if other EU countries were reasonably close to building a bomb and I found this question.
rocqua 15 hours ago [-]
That is a massive oversimplification of the diplomatic failures on many sides here.
You could just as easily say that doing regime change in a country will make them hate you, or that backing out of deals will make things worse, or that Israel can shape US policy at their own whims.
Yes, Iran had a stupid nuclear strategy. But that is only a minor part of this story.
dartharva 14 hours ago [-]
Wasn't so with India. Their first experimental test detonation was in 1974 (Smiling Buddha) in which they used nuclear material that US and Canada themselves supplied under "Atoms for Peace", but it wasn't until 24 years later in 1998 (Operation Shakti) that the country managed to test enough to call itself a nuclear state. They did all this while they were in consistent active conflict with large and powerful neighbors on three sides, along with explicit hostility from the US.
10 hours ago [-]
dj_gitmo 22 hours ago [-]
It’s horrible that the president can start a war without even asking congress.
nicomeemes 21 hours ago [-]
"Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest." ~ Garry Wills
Horrible, and illegal, but Congress has repeatedly refused to do their constitutional duty.
cvoss 21 hours ago [-]
It's, unfortunately, not illegal unless the military action continues for more than 60 days without Congressional approval. This is due to the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
These strikes are not illegal in the American body of legislation and law. We've been doing things like this for many decades.
sssilver 22 hours ago [-]
My impression was that this wasn’t how the US worked?
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
The last formal declaration of war by the US was during World War 2.
We got very good at gray area nonsense. The Korean War is not a war, it's a conflict. The Vietnam War is not a war, it's an engagement. We have police actions, "peacekeeping" operations, and a hundred other things...but not "wars".
We have the "global war on terror" and the accompanying Authorization for the Use of Military Force, created in the wake of 9/11 and still in effect today.
Congressional approval of military action is fundamentally dead.
19 hours ago [-]
21 hours ago [-]
PopePompus 22 hours ago [-]
Congress has been happily shedding its powers for decades. They don't want to be held responsible if a war turns out badly, so they haven't declared a war since 1945, I believe.
The last US declaration of war was in 1942, against Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania (allies of Nazi Germany).
epgui 22 hours ago [-]
You’re right; it’s how the US malfunctions.
handfuloflight 22 hours ago [-]
Congress does not have a spine.
colechristensen 22 hours ago [-]
It wasn't supposed to be how it worked but our legislature is basically dysfunctional and either vaguely gave away or just won't protect its own power.
gxs 22 hours ago [-]
This administration has been great at finding bugs in the code where the devs refuse to do shit
That said this particular bug for starting wars without congress has been exploited for decades with no patches in site
> Gödel's Loophole is a supposed "inner contradiction" in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gödel postulated in 1947. The loophole would permit America's republican structure to be legally turned into a dictatorship.
Freedom2 22 hours ago [-]
Generally no, but if you gaslight yourself into thinking you're the greatest democracy in the world with no equal and you need no patches or bugfixes, you can achieve a lot without any real checks or balances.
FuckButtons 17 hours ago [-]
The strong do as they will while the weak suffer what they must.
I’m glad that trump has returned us to a world where quotes from the 5th century bc seem like commentary on current affairs, since it means that all my time learning about power dynamics in political systems during antiquity is now completely relevant to dealing with current events, rather than a giant waste of time.
ekianjo 21 hours ago [-]
It's been like that for more than 20 years.
readthenotes1 22 hours ago [-]
That requirement has been honored rarely or skimpingly at best.
dmschulman 21 hours ago [-]
name one instance where congress wasn't involved in decisions around war powers.
ekianjo 20 hours ago [-]
when were they involved in the past 30 years?
dmschulman 20 hours ago [-]
not once, but twice with iraq in 1990 and 2003 (just to name one). but you still haven't fielded my question.
> The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States.
So it seems he's allowed to do this? It's still within 48 hours, so he has time to officially "notify" Congress, if he hasn't done so already. And since this was an aerial bombing, no armed forces remain there, so the 60-day bit is irrelevant.
stevenwoo 21 hours ago [-]
He notified the opposition leadership prior to the announcement on his social media website so he actually complied with that part.
archsurface 22 hours ago [-]
He didn't. The war was already started, he lent brief assistance.
SkyeCA 22 hours ago [-]
As is tradition: Israel says jump, the US responds "How high?"
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
Suppose we should congratulate Bibi on his ascendancy to the US presidency.
chairmansteve 21 hours ago [-]
Elon is out, Bibi is in.
cyanydeez 22 hours ago [-]
If it were legal, Russia probably would surpass Israel in political influence...legally.
foogazi 21 hours ago [-]
Russia’s main drone supplier is about to be knocked offline
According to a Ukrainian friend Russia is now producing them themselves. They got the design plans from Iran.
CapricornNoble 19 hours ago [-]
Russia's drones are primarily domestic production, not imported. The original Shaheds and their design were imported, but now the Russians are on the Geran-3 version and are cranking them out at the cyclic rate.
Not the situation as it stands. If it ends here its a disaster for Netanyahu.
As concerns global stability a single precision strike from an untouchable platform with zero marginal increase in obligations on strained naval assets is basically the best case scenario. If we had dropped a bomb, took a picture in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, and gone back to playing chess with peer adversaries in any conflict since the Korean War it would have been the smart move. The United States military is designed to protect global trade and win high intensity conflicts against peer adversaries and be seen preparing for it as a deterrant. It does this job extremely well. It was not designed for assymetrical quagmires with no possible palatable exit strategy.
Likud may be willing to fight Iran to the last American, but I'd rather we didn't.
paxys 21 hours ago [-]
Israel is "too big to fail" at this point. Netanyahu knows he can provoke every country in the world and if he ever meets real resistance the US government and military will take over. There's literally no way this cannot end well for him.
benreesman 19 hours ago [-]
Maybe, but I think that in the cold calculus of geo-realpolitik, TSMC is more important than Israel in a world where WTI is unlikely to ever trade above 150 and will never break 200 [1]. APAC is influential, but not in the same way it was when the entire economy was weeks from collapse without Israel dominating the region.
And the Trump Administration understands that we can't defend them both at a cost the public will accept. I think. Even MAGA diehards are like 70% opposed to another quagmire in the Middle East even if Trump endorses like a downticket primary radical.
That may be the perception from the outside due to theater (Trump holding Netanyahu's chair for the cameras etc.), but these plans have existed forever. Here is a plan from the Brookings Institute from 2009:
"CHAPTER FIVE Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike"
22 hours ago [-]
flyinglizard 22 hours ago [-]
There are many people around the world who are relived with Iran denied nuclear weapons, not just Israel. There are many countries in the Middle East, some openly hostile to Israel, who are very happy that Iran will not get immunity like North Korea.
Israel did most of the dirty work, US just came in to drive the final nail.
jeremyjh 21 hours ago [-]
I would trust the Ayatollah with nukes much further than I would trust Stephen Miller.
mhb 21 hours ago [-]
Trust him to what? Do what he says he would do with them?
21 hours ago [-]
samaltmanfried 21 hours ago [-]
> Do what he says he would do with them?
Like what? Declare a fatwa against them?
When you answer, please provide sources for your claims. I'll be eagerly awaiting your response.
diogocp 18 hours ago [-]
Ali Khamenei: "The situation between America and Iran is this: When you chant 'Death to America!' it is not just a slogan – it is a policy.
I don't care about his opinion on America. Tell us about his policy on nuclear weapons.
mhb 11 hours ago [-]
There are only two or three dots. They're not hard to connect.
jeremyjh 11 hours ago [-]
He talks a big game but he doesn't want everyone in his country to die. How do those dots line up for you?
mhb 10 hours ago [-]
When someone says he'd like to destroy you, spends half a trillion dollars pursuing that ambition instead of feeding his people, and is in the midst of attempting to wipe one of your closest allies off the face of the earth, I think you should believe him. What would it take for you to think it's more than just talk?
bigyabai 4 hours ago [-]
If my government was responsible for funding, training and defending foreign torture camps from international scrutiny, their citizens probably are justified in demanding the destruction of my states as a form of justice for unaccounted human rights abuses: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/legal-and-political-mag...
> SAVAK was established in 1967 with help from both the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
> All observers to trials since 1965 have reported allegations of torture which have been made by defendants and have expressed their own conviction that prisoners are tortured for the purpose of obtaining confessions. Alleged methods of torture include whipping and beating, electric shocks, the extraction of nails and teeth, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape.
Good luck convincing Iranians that they should welcome your kind into their country for any reason ever again.
mhb 3 hours ago [-]
I am skeptical that your description is an accurate depiction of Iranians' views regarding the US and their own government. It seems more likely that you're ascribing your opinion to a much larger group than is justified.
kelnos 21 hours ago [-]
My trust with either of them having nukes is so low it's not worth comparing.
sealeck 21 hours ago [-]
A truly sad indictment of the state of US government...
hearsathought 20 hours ago [-]
> There are many people around the world who are relived with Iran denied nuclear weapons, not just Israel.
Even more people would be relieved if trump bombed israel's nuclear facilities. But that doesn't make it right or justified.
Do you really want military attacks based on popularity or feelings? I don't think israel would enjoy living in such a world.
know-how 22 hours ago [-]
Yea, why don't we let the most destabilizing state sponsor of terrorism obtain a nuke? Surely that's only in Israel's interest...
You know, none of this would have happened if Hamas didn't attack Israel on Oct 7. Iran should know. They paid for it.
If Iran had a nuke, they are crazy enough to use it by slipping it to their cells.
"If someone says they are going to kill you, believe them."
Iran: Death to Israel
Iran: Death to America
Hamas: Death to Israel
Hamas: Death to America
So, hugs and pallets of cash? ...or you destroy their ability to kill a million of your civilians.
If their enrichment wasn't for weapons-development, why was it being done in a hardened under-ground bunker?
In 2023, unannounced inspections uncovered uranium particles enriched near weapons-grade. The so-called agreement was toilet paper to the terrorist state.
sealeck 21 hours ago [-]
> Yea, why don't we let the most destabilizing state sponsor of terrorism obtain a nuke? Surely that's only in Israel's interest...
Well, the Democrats had a very good plan to deal with this: diplomacy. They agreed a deal where Iran agreed not to build nuclear weapons, and in exchange they removed sanctions on Iran. A win-win scenario for everyone (except Bibi). Trump then - completely inexplicably - decided that he could do better at negotiating a deal, ripped up Obama's one, and then decided to... plunge the Middle East into chaos.
> You know, none of this would have happened if Hamas didn't attack Israel on Oct 7. Iran should know. They paid for it.
Surely the man who decided it was a good idea to alllow Qatar to give Hamas lots of money is at least partially to blame? [1] Or perhaps the person who decided to advocate to the US government that they should sell weapons to Iran [2]
Nearly all of Iran's neighbors in the region except Jordan and Syria supported our withdrawal from the agreement. The only complaining was done by Iran, European nations and the UN.
Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the UAE, Egypt, etc all supported us.
sealeck 20 hours ago [-]
I really don't understand why you think this makes this a good idea. Saudi Arabia also decided to launch an extremely ill-fated and brutal invasion of Yemen, which worked out terribly for them and for the Yeminis. I don't think they have good judgement on this.
roboror 20 hours ago [-]
Ah so merely our most important and powerful allies disagreed with the move?
latency-guy2 19 hours ago [-]
The Middle East is not strongly in the sphere of influence that Europeans have yes.
I promise you that the boots on the ground of the rest of the nations listed by the other person here is far more important here than strongly worded letters by the aging bureaucracy that governs the EU.
sealeck 8 hours ago [-]
> far more important here than strongly worded letters by the aging bureaucracy that governs the EU
Have you seen the bureaucracy currently running the US government? Makes the EU look pretty sane and well-rounded in comparison.
latency-guy2 7 hours ago [-]
Not sure what you want as a response, you won't find a friend in me, and you certainly won't be able to convince me if this is your response.
all those countries are effectively US vassals. Most of them have US military bases on their soil. Of course they’re going to do exactly what the US wants
siltcakes 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
l33tbro 20 hours ago [-]
A superpower being beholden to Netanyahu's impulses beggars belief. Israel, their client state, acts out in aggression against its neighbour against US advice. The US bails them out and takes the fallout now. Astounding.
20 hours ago [-]
righthand 21 hours ago [-]
This will surely reduce government spending.
ocdtrekkie 21 hours ago [-]
I mean I don't think anyone is still taking that goal seriously.
awakeasleep 19 hours ago [-]
It was originally serious only in shutting down the aspects of government that are a hinderance to large enterprise, and that part is just as serious as it ever was.
righthand 16 hours ago [-]
Not since after they immediately started rounding up immigrants and citizens alike and putting them in foreign and domestic private prisons without cause or due process. That alone makes anything DOGE does irrelevant twice over.
21 hours ago [-]
einrealist 11 hours ago [-]
Those UN buildings in Geneva and New York, are they up for sale already? What about the buildings of the US Congress?
10 hours ago [-]
bettercallsalad 9 hours ago [-]
How many million of dollars were spent in this spectacle? And to my average American, 50% of who seemingly live paycheck to paycheck, is this what you want your government to be doing? Asking as a Canadian.
9 hours ago [-]
codedokode 20 hours ago [-]
I am a little confused. Is bombing a sovereign country under far-fetched excuse considered ok or not today?
grugagag 20 hours ago [-]
For the world I want to live in it is not. Seems surreal but maybe it’s not that world anymore, and I fear it will get worse.
lwansbrough 20 hours ago [-]
What is far fetched about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?
19 hours ago [-]
Ekaros 17 hours ago [-]
Why not take moral upper hand and first destroy all of your own nuclear weapons?
sealeck 20 hours ago [-]
Lack of nuclear weapon.
lwansbrough 20 hours ago [-]
You can’t prevent them from developing a nuclear weapon if you wait until they have it.
They were enriching uranium near weapons-grade levels. What more evidence do you need without seeing an actual assembled nuclear weapon?
sealeck 19 hours ago [-]
I mean do you think the Iranian government is more incentivised to build a nuclear weapon before or after??
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
They've been pursuing nuclear weapons for decades, and bit by bit getting closer. A nuclear armed Iran would result in the rest of the middle east - most of which considers Iran a serious enemy - to pursue their own nuclear weapons program.
cbg0 17 hours ago [-]
The goal was to stop their progress, not reduce/increase incentives.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
There is nothing far-fetched about countering Iran's nuclear ambitions: they have been actively and blatantly pursuing it for decades.
A nuclear armed Iran would quickly lead much of the middle east to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran: in that part of the world, Iran is considered a very serious enemy.
billfor 20 hours ago [-]
It's OK.
20 hours ago [-]
drecho 22 hours ago [-]
Some in the U.S. want peace. I guess no one else gives a shit and is just going to jettison us into a war for millennia.
avoutos 21 hours ago [-]
Preventing Iran from having a nuke is IMO a good way of preserving peace. The allies tried appeasment and most historians agree that approach was one of the main causes of WWII.
runako 21 hours ago [-]
Huge difference here IMHO is that the west has been using this line for 40-50 years. At some point it's not "appeasement" and just "diplomacy between countries with differing values are complicated."
Put another way: if you want to call it appeasement, fine, it has worked for a long time. On the other hand, "peace via war" has a terrible track record.
lwansbrough 20 hours ago [-]
What if Iran simply didn’t develop nuclear weapons? Have you considered that option?
nsingh2 20 hours ago [-]
What if the U.S. simply stopped interfering with other nations[1]? Have you considered that option? But of course, the U.S. can do whatever it wants because of its military might and the fact that it has nukes.
And there's the answer: on the world stage, you’d better be close friends with someone who has nukes, have your own, or be forced into a client state.
> But of course, the U.S. can do whatever it wants because of its military might and the fact that it has nukes.
Yes. Do not proliferate nuclear weapons. It’s not a big ask.
> you’d better be close friends with someone who has nukes
This is a completely acceptable and reasonable solution. It is how most of Europe operates.
nsingh2 19 hours ago [-]
> Yes. Do not proliferate nuclear weapons. It’s not a big ask.
It's a very big ask to not proliferate nuclear weapons, because nukes correlate with sovereignty. You didn’t address that point at all.
> This is a completely acceptable and reasonable solution. It is how most of Europe operates.
US friendship in the case of Iran means a puppet ruler (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran). And now Europe is in the process of decoupling itself from the US. Not to mention how the US completely dropped support for Ukraine. Turns out relying on an "ally" for defense like this is not such a great idea.
Israel also understands this, and so has multiple nukes in its arsenal. Why did Israel "simply" not proliferate nuclear weapons even when it enjoyed the protection and support of the US?
yibg 18 hours ago [-]
If I was Iran, or any country on the US's naughty list, I would be trying to build a nuke as quickly and quietly as I can. It seems to be the only way to not get bombed.
HellDunkel 12 hours ago [-]
If you botch the "quiet" part this seems more of a plan to get bombed quickly.
yibg 2 hours ago [-]
Probabilities.
Given the track record in the region and the relationships involved, not getting a nuke seamless will lead to getting bombed with almost 100% certainty over a long enough period.
If they botch the quiet part, they'll almost certainly get bombed in the short term, which may or may not lead to the end of the project. But then will almost certain prevent getting bombed more in the future.
runako 20 hours ago [-]
Has anyone credible said/demonstrated that they have developed nuclear weapons?
The US clearly does not believe they have operational nukes, or we would not have bombed them today. The actions undermine the official statements.
Put in realpolitik: would it be worth the US spending an Iraq War's expenditure of lives and $3 trillion to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon?
Why?
What makes this moment the place where the working approach of the last half-century simply cannot work another day?
lwansbrough 20 hours ago [-]
If they had already developed them, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion because nobody is going to war with a nuclear armed state.
The question is only, did they have the means to, and was there an indication they were? The answer is yes. They were enriching uranium at levels that go beyond anything non-nefarious. Their lead nuclear scientists were going to be meeting with their ballistic missile scientists (according to the dossier.)
On would it be worth it: nuclear proliferation is probably the most dangerous existential threat that humanity faces that is completely preventable. Iran is the most destabilizing country in the region and the cascade of nuclear proliferation that would occur if they succeeded would be a nightmare. That is easily worth $3T.
runako 19 hours ago [-]
If I’m a head of state in a contested region, I would read your post as an urgent appeal to make acquisition of nuclear capability as the top priority of the state.
Nonproliferation via war is not a viable approach.
This reminds me to read more on the game theory aspect of nuclear states. But I do find it fascinating that no nuclear-armed states have ever been in a shooting war. Interesting to speculate whether the Middle East could have seen less bloodshed over the decades if all the players had been armed since near the beginning of the nuclear age.
lwansbrough 19 hours ago [-]
One often under-appreciated aspect of proliferation is accidental detonation.
It is not safer for more states to have nukes simply because it introduces more variables that are hard or impossible to control.
And accidents/mistakes/miscommunications account for most (all?) of our closest calls with nukes.
runako 19 hours ago [-]
I agree with you about accidental detonation and nonproliferation in general.
But it is also clear that enforcement of nonproliferation without similarly muscular enforcement of sovereignty in general creates a huge incentive for proliferation.
If we truly want nonproliferation, it simply follows that powerful nations must stop actions like the Russian conquest in Ukraine and whatever Israel is doing in Iran. Every government at base has an incentive to do everything possible keep bombs from falling on its cities, and a demonstrated nuclear capability is the only proven way to do that in a regime where nuclear powers are allowed to act with impunity.
lwansbrough 19 hours ago [-]
I think one thing Iran could do would be to stop funding terrorism in the middle east and perhaps also not threaten the complete destruction of Israel while simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons. That seems to have sent the wrong message by the looks of it.
runako 19 hours ago [-]
Conflating things with nonproliferation detracts from the effort to prevent that singular threat. Now we are weighing the global, persistent threat of more nuclear weapons against regional terrorism and proving unable to decide which is more important. This, in a case where by nature of the problem, “both” is not an acceptable answer.
Maybe we are detracting from some regional terrorism at the margins while increasing incentives for nuclear proliferation. I don’t think that’s a smart trade off, but that’s where we are headed.
euW3EeBe 19 hours ago [-]
> Iran is the most destabilizing country in the region
You misspelled Israel, and a reminder that Israel is the only nation in the region with multiple nuclear warheads.
Doesn't seem to have worked in this case. They did not have nukes, they got attacked. How you explain that? How do these good guys protect them against evil guys if not with nukes?
barbazoo 20 hours ago [-]
Some people say Iran having a nuke isn’t the threat some think it is.
Appeasement for an imaginary weapons program our own director of national intelligence just said they don’t have.
Copy and paste this nonsense argument for Iraq 3 trillion dollars ago.
avoutos 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
user3939382 20 hours ago [-]
Interesting that you have more intelligence on Iran than our director of national intelligence.
lwansbrough 20 hours ago [-]
Tulsi Gabbard isn’t exactly a high bar.
amanaplanacanal 19 hours ago [-]
She does have the combined resources of all of the US intelligence services.
lwansbrough 19 hours ago [-]
I just wouldn’t put much stock into anything she says about anything.
user3939382 18 hours ago [-]
Why, because she’s not a DNC loyalist / bloodthirsty chickenhawk?
CamperBob2 21 hours ago [-]
I must've missed the part where Iran invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland.
kelnos 21 hours ago [-]
I think GP's point was that it's better to act now, before Iran does the equivalent of invading Czechoslovakia or Poland.
siltcakes 21 hours ago [-]
Israel has been doing that for almost 80 years and they have nuclear weapons.
int_19h 21 hours ago [-]
What would be the equivalent of Czechoslovakia and Poland and this scenario?
21 hours ago [-]
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, like when we prevented Germany from ever being a problem again with the Treaty of Versailles.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
A nuclear armed Iran is a horrible idea. America an many other countries have been countering that for decades.
A nuclear armed Iran - and remember that in vast swathes of the middle east, Iran is considered a very dangerous enemy - would lead to the rest of the middle east rapidly pursuing their own nuclear weapons.
HEmanZ 9 hours ago [-]
Right wing propaganda is too strong here.
Last night I tried to explain to my MIL that Iran did not do 9/11 (after she claimed this was finally payback for that). She responded that I was wrong because I listen to the liberal media. It was like a cartoon, I felt like a crazy person. she was so convinced that if Iran got nuclear weapons they would immediately use them on US soil. When I pointed out that would be suicide for them, and accomplish absolutely nothing, she said they aren’t rational, they just want to end the world.
Her only news source is Fox, so that must be who’s peddling this nonsense.
There’s an optimist in me that says, maybe by some small miracle that given enough time in a cold-ish war current Iranian regime will get replaced by something democratic and stable. Probably a pipe dream the way things are going, but not impossible.
Ekaros 16 hours ago [-]
Nuclear proliferation is best way to world peace. Anyone saying else is just pure evil who want to subjugate and genocide other nations. More nukes the better and safer world is.
21 hours ago [-]
MarkMarine 22 hours ago [-]
This is astonishing. Our intelligence concluded Iran wasn’t moving towards a nuke and we hit them anyway, using peace negotiations as a ruse. No authorization from the representatives of the people who actually fight in the war, no thought of what this will do.
If the comparison with how we treat hostile forces with nuclear weapons wasn’t more stark. N. Korea is basically left alone, their leader praised. Libya gives up nukes and then the state falls in on itself.
This is proving to any state that nuclear arms are really the only protection. The world is less safe, and the next generation of young men like me (20 years ago) are about to be thrown into the meat grinder, sent by a ruling class that doesn’t even answer to the people anymore.
We’ve really lost our way.
shihab 22 hours ago [-]
This strike didn't happen to protect Americans from nukes, this happened to protect a rogue politician who was about to be impeached by his countrymen, and to make the Greater Israel project come true.
Reminder, a recent survey found 16% American supported an offensive strike against Iran.[1]
America and the west (and much of the not-west) have been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades.
Iran is considered a dangerous enemy in much of the middle east. A nuclear armed Iran would quickly lead to nuclear proliferation throughout the middle east. No one wants an Iran with nukes.
kurtis_reed 19 hours ago [-]
The intelligence was that Iran was moving toward a nuke, they just weren't there yet.
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
The intelligence said the opposite, that they had not decided to develop a nuke.
EnPissant 22 hours ago [-]
If not to build a nuke, why have a secret uranium enrichment facility built over 250 ft under a mountain?
Terr_ 22 hours ago [-]
That argument only works when normal aboveground civilian infrastructure won't get bombed anyway on suspicion.
Then both kinds require the same protection, and protection can't be used to distinguish between them.
"She's obviously a witch, because she's been living deep in the forest all suspicious-like ever since we burned down her cursed house."
kelnos 21 hours ago [-]
60% enriched uranium is not quite considered weapons-grade, but also has no civilian applications. Hiding the facility is immaterial if the facility is doing stuff that isn't useful for non-weapon work.
yyyk 21 hours ago [-]
Iran did not expect to be bombed back at all, which is why their defenses were so shoddy around nearly everything. The _only_ thing having this level of protection is the enrichment facility.
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
It would have worked if Iran had stopped also paying people to shoot missiles so often and donating to kill Ukraine.
EnPissant 21 hours ago [-]
There is no non-nuclear weapon purpose valuable enough to build such a facility. It's obviously for nuclear bombs.
codedokode 20 hours ago [-]
So every country which has facilities to enrich uranium, needs to be bombed, correct?
EnPissant 19 hours ago [-]
That's a separate question. I am just responding to the people saying we don't know they are enriching uranium for nuclear weapons. Of course they are.
buzzerbetrayed 19 hours ago [-]
If you honestly think Iran is enriching uranium for clean energy, I have a bridge to sell you.
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
The publicly revealed, internationally inspected secret uranium enrichment facility?
MarkMarine 22 hours ago [-]
Credible deterrent against stuff like this?
EnPissant 22 hours ago [-]
> Our intelligence concluded Iran wasn’t moving towards a nuke
> Credible deterrent against stuff like this?
You mean the credible deterrent is moving towards a nuke?
MarkMarine 22 hours ago [-]
That is the point of what I was saying, yes.
Look I dgaf about what Iran was doing, there is no wool over my eyes about what that state is capable of. I saw the IEDs with copper cones used to kill and maim my friends, they almost certainly came from Iran.
What I care about is: congress declares war, not the executive. The people should decide, and we just stepped 10 steps closer to the monarchy we tried to depose 250 years ago.
christophilus 21 hours ago [-]
This has been happening my entire 40+ years of life. I agree it shouldn’t, but this ain’t anything new. If this makes Trump a monarchy, then every president since 2000 was a monarch.
dragontamer 21 hours ago [-]
Straw, camel, back.
2024 Trump is using the power of the executive in ways even more grotesquely than 2016 Trump.
archsurface 22 hours ago [-]
They could have simply had IAEA inspections.
smashah 21 hours ago [-]
Trump ripped up JCPOA and you know this. Israel could also do that. Oh but wait then the inspections would find stolen American nuclear material.
archsurface 21 hours ago [-]
Communication lines are always open for discussion and negotiation; the end of one agreement doesn't mean no more agreements.
yibg 18 hours ago [-]
Agreement requires 2 sides doesn't it? Who's agreeing on the American side?
CamperBob2 21 hours ago [-]
Gee, I dunno. Because some berserk moron might attack their country, maybe?
Countries without nukes get victimized by countries with nukes. If you haven't noticed this pattern yet, there's not much hope for you.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
In the middle east, Iran is considered a serious enemy, and is widely detested. A nuclear armed Iran would immediately lead the rest of the middle east to pursue their own nuclear weapons program.
ExoticPearTree 8 hours ago [-]
It is detested because Iran is Shia and the other countries around them are Sunni. The cause is religious, not "we don't like them because they are bad".
smashah 22 hours ago [-]
The premise of going to war with a country because that country may have the capability to win/end it is quite demonic circular reasoning. In this case IL/US should preemptively bunker bust every person in the region that has sovereign will. I think only when the entire region is replaced by Tesla Robots loyal to western chauvinism then IL/US can finally feel safe from the consequences of their own actions like committing genocides.
I visited Nagasaki/Hiroshima a few years ago, at the end of both memorials there are celebrations of NPTs and denuclearization efforts with veneers of 90's nostalgia - as if the job were done. How wrong we all were, today 2 non-NPT nuclear powers bombed a NPT non-nuclear power to prevent imaginary WMD Nukes, triggering a possible regional conflict that will kill millions. The only country that shouldn't have nukes is America - they dropped 2 for vibes because the Nazis already surrendered and they wanted to try out their new toy. IL\US project their genocidal tendencies onto others then claim preemptive strikes. Both countries a threat to world peace. It's clear now the only way these two countries leave you alone is if you have a nuke. Any sovereign logical leader will now pursue them. IL/US have made the world a much more dangerous place just because they want to continue the holocaust of Gaza.
Shame.
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archsurface 22 hours ago [-]
Gabbard has recently stated that's not true, that she was quoted out of context.
shihab 21 hours ago [-]
Her statement directly contradicted her testimony. After recent Trump's open dismissal of her remark, she had to say this to keep her job.
tbrownaw 18 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that actually making a bomb once you have the material for it just isn't that hard. Her statements are only contradictory if it is hard (and slow).
archsurface 21 hours ago [-]
She stated they had unprecedented levels of enriched uranium for a country without weapons.
mrcwinn 7 hours ago [-]
We tend to prefer stories where there is neatly a good guy and a bad guy. Much easier to reason and support our own moral perspective.
Reality doesn’t work like that. Netanyahu may indeed be a war criminal. That doesn’t make Iran the good guy and it doesn’t mean their stonewalling was not likely shielding the development of an offensive nuclear capability.
America’s sole responsibility is in its protection and the deterrence of these programs, regardless of who you have to hitch your wagon to. I really wish peace with Iran were possible. I see no evidence they’re interested in that peace.
weatherlite 7 hours ago [-]
I wish more people were able to perform more balanced/critical thinking like that instead of constantly cheering for their team.
farts_mckensy 7 hours ago [-]
If America's responsibility is deterrence, why do we invade countries that don't have nuclear capabilities? Don't you suppose that incentivizes every country watching this to develop nukes? They see that if they don't, eventually they'll get invaded. That's the opposite of deterrence.
steve76 7 hours ago [-]
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yencabulator 21 hours ago [-]
Vietnam -> Gulf War = 15 years
Gulf War -> US invasion of Iraq = 12 years
US invasion of Iraq -> USA, Iran & Israel = 22 years
Looks like it's time for USA to feed a new generation of grunts into the PTSD grinder again.
20 hours ago [-]
beefnugs 18 hours ago [-]
Damn, but have they so blatantly cut vet benefits and support right before the need for massive recruits in the past?
Why would anyone sign up for military service after dump has personally pissed in their faces?
iw2rmb 13 hours ago [-]
That’s the ideal situation to have vets and poor people in surviving mode.
Now you just release act of great benefits for those who sign and you get them onboard in a blink of an eye.
Same with the Russian mil conscripts in Ukraine.
Same with the crusade in mid ages.
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hackernoops 19 hours ago [-]
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IdontKnowRust 21 hours ago [-]
This is definitely a bold movement, I pray for peace, And hoping US stops jumping in conflicts that are not theirs
nsingh2 20 hours ago [-]
This absolutely is a conflict that the US has been involved in from near the start [1]. This a continuation of that, not something entirely new.
This is a conflict America and its allies have been fighting for decades: to ensure Iran does not get nuclear weapons.
Much of the middle east considers Iran to be a very significant enemy. A nuclear armed Iran would lead to much of the rest of the middle east rapidly pursuing their own nuclear weapons programs.
mandmandam 12 hours ago [-]
I get that you consider this important enough to write ~40 variations of this comment in this thread.
But people might think it sounds a bit silly, when Iran have been 'months' to 'a year' away from nuclear weapons for thirty years [0].
Especially when the IAEA themselves say there is zero proof that Iran have made any effort to obtain nuclear weapons [1].
Do you have any evidence for this? Any at all?? ... If so, wouldn't it be smart to share it the next time you make these claims in defense of acts of war?
9 days ago, Israel assassinated Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, along with 9 scientists [2]. They didn't offer any evidence for doing this, just claimed it was necessary. If you have access to any genuine evidence, it would be great to see it. And if you don't - consider not presenting you claims as fact ~40 times in a single post.
Well one better goes for the bomb if one decided to go above 60% (because whatelse do you plan?). Apparently using it as a bargain doesn't work out as expected.
22 hours ago [-]
kmnc 21 hours ago [-]
War is a racket, move along we got bombs to sell. All I can hope is that somehow someway the Iranian people will be better off in the future. Well at least America has its enemy again, the immigrants as enemy wasn’t going over as smoothly as expected. Religion and culture wars are just so much easier.
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lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
There sure are a lot of people in here who are defaulting to "nuclear proliferation is okay" by thinking that not being involved somehow solves the problem. You are in a prisoner's dilemma. Choosing not to participate is still participating.
bagels 21 hours ago [-]
Diplomacy was working until the US unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in 2018.
There are solutions other than war to nonproliferation.
ethagnawl 21 hours ago [-]
Stuxnext was quite an achievement, too -- aside from it escaping containment and all. Kudos to ... whoever it was that pulled that off.
trhway 21 hours ago [-]
Iran regime has been a great destabilizer and war monger. So, may be their nuke development just provided an opening for the regime change operation. The Middle East will be much more peaceful once Iran is de-fanged. This even may help Europe because Iran was helping Russia in the war.
bagels 21 hours ago [-]
It didn't work in Iraq. Why would it work here?
corimaith 5 hours ago [-]
Iraq today is alot less of headache to it's neighbours than if Saddam Hussein was still here. So clearly it did work on the long term.
trhway 20 hours ago [-]
no boots on the ground and more moderate goals. The current state of Iraq - severely corrupt moderately religious not threatening anybody kleptocracy would be a success here. Not threatening is the key - Iran has been behind sectarian violence in Iraq, behind Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis, helping Assad, ... one can see that Iran's regime should have already been taken out yesterday just in order to advance peace in the Middle East.
Note - no boots on the ground wouldn't be a big limitation because in case of say ethnic violence, with Azerbaijani and Persian being the largest groups, or even just great social chaos, Turkey and Azerbaijan, are, as far as i understand, ready to bring their armies into the Iran's Azerbaijani populated provinces, which would leave Persians, who are many don't like that "Arab's Islam", in their provinces to their own devices, probably even restoring the monarchy with the Shah's son, which again would be a good outcome here.
bagels 19 hours ago [-]
No boots on the ground... yet. We don't know how Iran reacts next. To their leadership, this is a pretty serious existential threat.
trhway 18 hours ago [-]
They don't have much options. They have only Revolutionary Guard for them. Army hates the Guard. The Guard isn't really a fighting force, it can only launch missiles and beat unarmed protesters. Once it runs out of missiles (with a lot of missiles lost to the bombing), it is done.
I expect a full no-fly zone enforcement, and with that the regime's domestic authority and power will quickly go down the drain.
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
So we're blaming the US because Iran chose to pursue weapons-grade enrichment. Have you considered that Iran could simply choose not to do that, like every other paranuclear state?
Ultimately the choice of whether or not Iran gets to build a nuclear bomb is not up to them, and they're finding that out now.
bagels 21 hours ago [-]
I am blaming Trump. He did this. He withdrew from the treaty which led directly to this action today.
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
What happened between Trump withdrawing from the treaty and Fordo getting bombed? I feel like you're perhaps missing a few critical steps on the Iranian side.
bagels 21 hours ago [-]
Trump signaled that diplomacy wasn't going to solve the tension, and they weren't getting what they wanted to in exchange for not building weapons. Of course they were going to build them. Why would they not, whether for offense or defense?
lwansbrough 20 hours ago [-]
Why would they not build nuclear weapons? I guess they don’t have to wonder anymore. It’s not like they weren’t warned.
You can always stop building nuclear weapons at any time and change course. But they chose not to, and suffered the consequences. Whose fault is that?
codedokode 19 hours ago [-]
Please remind why France, England, Israel are allowed to have weapons and Iran is not?
throwawaythekey 17 hours ago [-]
- Trump murdered top a top Iranian general (Soleimani)
- Israel bombed an Iranian Embassy
- Iran counterstruck Israel but relatively restrained and with warning
- Israel bombed several high ranking Iranians, especially those involved with the nuclear program
- Iran counterstruck Israel.
None of it had that much to do with America.
TulliusCicero 21 hours ago [-]
It does remind me of the North Korean situation, where nobody wanted NK to get nukes, but since nobody was willing to take action on it, and diplomacy went nowhere (because they obviously wanted nukes), eventually NK got the nukes they wanted.
Does anyone think that situation resolved well? If we were able to go back in time, would we choose diplomacy again, knowing it would fail?
throwaway_dang 10 hours ago [-]
During the Korean war, when the US started to lose, they threatened to use nuclear weapons to force negotiations.
Maybe that's why NK has nukes. They US declared war on them and then threatened them with nuclear weapons to prevent North Korea from winning the war.
jack_h 21 hours ago [-]
> Does anyone think that situation resolved well?
I don't think we've seen the resolution of that situation. We will one day, and I think the chances of it being a good outcome are pretty slim. I'm very much against Iran having nuclear weapons. I just hope we don't get dragged into a long war which will explode our national debt and potentially lead to a sovereign debt crisis.
TulliusCicero 21 hours ago [-]
Iraq and Afghanistan were long wars because we had a ground invasion and then nation building in countries with relatively weak civic structures and identities. It doesn't seem like anybody is seriously considering a ground invasion of Iran here, Israel will probably just continue airstrikes and sabotage/assassination. The US might join in on more airstrikes but it seems extremely unlikely it'd go beyond that, the appetite for nation building is obviously gone ever since Iraq and Afghanistan went terribly. Nobody in the US wants a repeat of that.
arp242 21 hours ago [-]
North-Korea has had a bunch of conventional artillery aimed at Seoul since the 50s. They've had a "we will completely fuck your shit up"-type deterrent way before nukes, which is also why they've been able to do their nuclear programme: they used their previous deterrent to develop their new one.
There was never really any other option than "ask nicely to not do that", and maybe try some covert sabotage here and there. Everyone knew that and everyone knew that everyone knew.
In Iran the situation is different, because everyone knows that they don't have any such deterrent and they will lose in any real shooting war, with fairly little options to meaningfully fight back. There is a real inventive to actual pursue diplomacy for Iran which didn't exist in North-Korea.
Also the North-Korean regime and population is of quite a different nature than Iran. By and large, the North-Korean regime just wants to be left alone and is quite isolationist. This also doesn't really apply to Iran.
There are lots of people in this thread who are defaulting to "when the US attacks someone that's by default OK, and you have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's not".
What makes it OK specifically for the US to do this? There is an entire international framework to deal with non proliferation. Bombing another country on the other side of the world because you can is not that.
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
The people who decide if it's okay are the ones with nuclear weapons. They are the ones who built and enforce the framework for determining what "okay" even means. That's why nuclear weapon acquisition is so powerful. And why it's so fiercely protected.
The framework to deal with non-proliferation depends on the states involved voluntarily participating in the framework. Iran was not doing so.
There are numerous countries that enjoy paranuclear status who have had no problem not lying to the IAEA.
You cannot place blame for this outcome on anyone other than Iran, they made the move entirely of their own volition. Once you open the door for consequence, you don't get to choose how it is handed out.
nradov 21 hours ago [-]
You completely missed the point. Whether certain actions are "OK" are not is utterly irrelevant in geopolitical affairs. Sovereign states will always act in their (perceived) best interest regardless of legalisms or moral codes. Justifications are then manufactured for public consumption.
Ultima ratio regum.
As for international frameworks, how should the Non-Proliferation Treaty be enforced? If a country violates it then what should the consequences be?
I agree, we should require Israel to surrender its nuclear weapons or subject them to the same consequences.
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
They are a nuclear state. They have defacto special privileges. That's how it works. The US doesn't decide that.
ivape 21 hours ago [-]
North Korea is crazy and diplomacy works just fine with them. This is entirely the foreign policy of another country that has taken American foreign policy hostage. I'm sorry, the America is not safer because of this ... the opposite in fact.
TulliusCicero 21 hours ago [-]
Eh? Diplomatic measures famously failed to stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons.
ivape 21 hours ago [-]
That ship sailed but the world was able to manage them. The ship didn't sail with Iran and the world was able to manage it. My point being is that whatever stage the situation is in, diplomacy without war actually works.
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
So this is a comment in favour of nuclear proliferation? I don't get your point. It sounds like you're saying oh well because NK has worked out so far. So far, by the way, because they're still a rogue state, and they now have nuclear weapons on top of that.
ivape 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, so far it worked. That's what "it's working" means, like, it will always be "its working so far". Listen, don't bring up the bullshit framework everyone used to get into the Iraq war. I can hear the echoes of it in your commentary. Everything is working so far, that is what a process is.
TulliusCicero 21 hours ago [-]
"It's working" in terms of NK not nuking anyone, but it also means that people are scared to do anything to North Korea even when they're belligerent, because they're a nuclear power now.
> Listen, don't bring up the bullshit framework everyone used to get into the Iraq war.
Ridiculous comparison. No one's talking about a ground invasion here.
lwansbrough 20 hours ago [-]
I discard any pro-proliferation arguments at face value.
You’re arguing for a greater number of uncontrollable parameters governing the world’s most deadly weapons. I can’t think of a more idiotic position to take. And the “nothing bad has happened yet” belief system is just insane. Stanislav Petrov? Able Archer 83? Read a book man.
How many times has the world’s most capable military accidentally almost detonated a nuclear bomb?
ivape 12 hours ago [-]
You are a warmonger. Take your game somewhere else.
knowknow 21 hours ago [-]
You do realize that there are ways to avoid nuclear proliferation without war? The US had a deal with Iran and multiple other countries that made them limit their nuclear capabilities, but the US withdrew from it in 2018.
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
Iran needing to be babysat is their choice. Numerous states are capable of building nuclear weapons or enriching weapon-grade uranium. And they don't, because they aren't bad actors.
Iran is an objectively bad actor when it comes to nuclear weapons. They created the problem voluntarily, of their own volition. What comes after is not up to them.
Iran, by the way, broke the IAEA agreement. Fordo was built illegally, without disclosure to the IAEA.
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k310 22 hours ago [-]
Declaration of War vs. Authorization for Use of Military Force: How America Goes to War
Just about every intelligence agency and expert agrees on nearly all the data. The debate and the 'conflicting' reports are mainly a matter of definitions.
The data is that Iran has some weapons research, and have/had about 400kg of 60% enriched Uranium (no civilian use), an higher amount of lower grade enriched Uranium, and a certain number of centrifuges for enrichment.
The interpretation bit is regarding what's called 'weaponization' (aka taking all the materials and converting them to a bomg):
A modern bomb would use >90% (preferably >95%) Uranium and an implosion mechanism and be light and small enough to put on a common ballistic missile. While getting to 90% would have been easy for them (at one time they 'accidentally' enriched to 88%), they haven't done it yet, and it isn't entirely clear how close they are on miniaturization.
A hacky bomb could use a lower grade of Uranium (60% would barely do if they pooled all of it), be much heavier (it comes with the lower grade), possibly use a simpler gun-type mechanism, and would have to be delivered with some custom mechanism.
So 'weapons grade' could mean '90% and above', or it could mean 'enriched to a level that has no use apart from building weapons'. 'Distance to a bomb' could mean 'distance from what can be easily delivered' or 'distance from any fissile explosive'.
So much for humanity learning from its mistakes....
arp242 20 hours ago [-]
"But this time it's different!"
IMHO the Israeli policy of punching everyone so hard they're reeling is a massive mistake for Israel in the long term. It works great short-term, but 50 years? 100 years? Who knows what the world will look like then, and being surrounded by enemies is not going to work well when you no longer have your fancy US-backed missile shields and whatnot. The best long-term bet is for normalised relationship with its neighbours, and every time something like this happens that gets set back 20 years at least.
Then again, they had already given up on that with how it treated the Palestinians both in Gaza and West-Bank...
This doesn't mean military action is never an option under any circumstances, but no nation can perpetuate hostilities forever. Whether it's 50, 100, or 200 years: this has a massive risk of coming back to bite Israel hard.
sorcerer-mar 20 hours ago [-]
Yeah IMO the last 2 years (and especially 5 hours) have pretty much permanently shattered Israel's privileged child status in the US. Their actions in Gaza have fractured leftwing support, and dragging the US into this war have fractured rightwing support.
Hope they're building other friendships in the region, I don't see the unquestioning US patronage lasting much longer.
Stevvo 19 hours ago [-]
Would be nice if that were the reality, but it couldn't be further from it. US support for Israeli is stronger than it ever has been.
sorcerer-mar 9 hours ago [-]
It definitely is not. The gulf in support between US politicians and the US public is wider than it ever has been. That's not sustainable in the long run (it is probably a notable factor already in the loss of the Dems' presidential candidate [among many others, of course])
ch33zer 16 hours ago [-]
Among the political class, which is the only group that matters now that senators don't really answer to voters any more
moogly 19 hours ago [-]
> Their actions in Gaza have fractured leftwing support,
Chuck Schumer still supports killing and maiming toddlers though.
sorcerer-mar 9 hours ago [-]
Excellent case in point
FuckButtons 17 hours ago [-]
Trump doesn’t seem like the kind of person to learn from his, or anyone else's mistakes.
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cempaka 22 hours ago [-]
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hagbard_c 22 hours ago [-]
That remains to be seen and, in another universe, could have been said about someone not keeping a nation from creating nuclear weaponry which it subsequently used against its opponents.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
Much of humanity has learned, and so aggressively pursues anti-proliferation.
America, the west, and many countries beyond the west, have been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades.
Iran is detested in much of the middle east. If they get nukes, the rest of the middle east will feel compelled to quickly pursue their own nuclear weapons programs.
b0rat 15 hours ago [-]
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wnevets 19 hours ago [-]
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codedokode 19 hours ago [-]
He promised to end a war but instead started another one.
mensetmanusman 18 hours ago [-]
We will know shortly whether bombing 700 spinning motors that we’re building death spheres is an act of war…
jjk166 18 hours ago [-]
Well if someone did it to our enrichment plants, it would be an act of war.
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compiler_queen 15 hours ago [-]
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AStonesThrow 12 hours ago [-]
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bigbacaloa 15 hours ago [-]
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keelsandnig 18 hours ago [-]
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deepsquirrelnet 20 hours ago [-]
Is “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE” about to become the new “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”?
19 hours ago [-]
OfficeChad 16 hours ago [-]
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msgodel 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah there was no good reason for that. The main thing I liked about Trump is that he didn't start any wars his first term, if he gets us into a war I'm going to be fucking mad.
cmilton 22 hours ago [-]
I know he likes to insinuate that, but it’s simply not true.
While you are correct it wasn’t a war, but neither is this technically.
Nathanba 15 hours ago [-]
which was widely believed to be a mere gesture to appease warhawks and that's why they only hit a few empty landing strips
b0sk 21 hours ago [-]
It is fascinating. He lies so much, keeps repeating those lies and somehow people start believing those lies.
foogazi 21 hours ago [-]
They have to believe it to have a reason to like Trump
ekianjo 21 hours ago [-]
He did strike Syria during his first term
CamperBob2 21 hours ago [-]
11/29/11: "In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran."
1/17/12: "@BarackObama will attack Iran in order to get re-elected."
9/16/13: "I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order save face!"
11/10/13: "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly - not skilled!"
"If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace." - Presidential debate, 2024
If you voted for Trump, you voted precisely for this. Every accusation from him is either a confession in disguise or an unfulfilled wish.
fallingknife 21 hours ago [-]
Every accusation from Trump is some random line he pulled out of his ass on the spot, and people like you keep falling for it and trying to divine some grand strategy out of it.
lesuorac 20 hours ago [-]
Every accusation from Trump is something he himself is doing or thing about doing.
It's not random.
fallingknife 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I'm sure Trump raving about Obama invading Iran was part of a galaxy brain geopolitical master plan hatched back when he was just a real estate developer / minor reality TV star who wouldn't even run for president for another 5 years and not just random attempts to go viral.
lesuorac 4 hours ago [-]
Why does it have to be galaxied brain?
He can just have wanted to punish Iran or something without it being a full blown plan. Trump assassinated an Iranian general during his first term [1].
That's the "unfulfilled wish" part I was referring to.
There are exceptions -- birtherism comes to mind -- but that's what they are, exceptions. In general, though, accusations from Republicans reliably reflect things they are either already doing, planning to do, or wish they could get away with.
standardUser 21 hours ago [-]
> if he gets us into a war I'm going to be fucking mad
Maybe Trump will claim the airstrikes were just a joke, like he does when he tells his supporters to use violence towards other Americans. Otherwise, the United States is definitely, unambiguously at war with Iran.
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giantg2 20 hours ago [-]
Well, CSOCs are likely to get busy this week.
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pelagicAustral 22 hours ago [-]
I fell for the "two more weeks" meme...
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 22 hours ago [-]
Ngl.. so did I.
20 hours ago [-]
senectus1 20 hours ago [-]
sigh this is Iraq all over again.
watch as the US is now dragged into 10-20 years of war in the middle east again.
barbazoo 20 hours ago [-]
Which stock do I buy
FuckButtons 17 hours ago [-]
Not TSMC.
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waltercool 22 hours ago [-]
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mynameishere 22 hours ago [-]
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Kye 22 hours ago [-]
They didn't finish manufacturing consent yet. Novice mistake.
yongjik 22 hours ago [-]
It's Trump. He could bomb LA and 30% of Americans will cheer for it. I'm not sure consent matters.
Hopefully the ensuing economic meltdown will sour enough Americans before too many people are killed, but who knows.
ExaltedPunt 20 hours ago [-]
A large portion of Trump's base are very unhappy about bombing Iran and are very critical of any comments that are pro-war in general. I see it in a lot of comments sections and social media message to the effect of "I voted for Trump, and I didn't vote for this (war in Iran)".
Generally, Any prominent pro-Israel republican if they post anything pro-war will have hundreds of negative replies.
It is incredibly depressing to see people constantly falling into the trap that their political opposition are dumb / brainwashed.
Timon3 7 hours ago [-]
Let's wait and see if they're still unhappy about the bombing in one week. This is a pattern I've seen time and time again with his base, e.g. with January 6th - they start off unhappy & surprised until their media has started sharing theories and viewpoints that slowly move them towards accepting and supporting whatever happened.
I'd love to be wrong here, but I don't think I am.
yongjik 5 hours ago [-]
Not sure how much we can trust this poll, but it's already happening:
I don't trust YouGov polls. A few years ago everyone of their polls on English Politics came out at 71% vs 29%, which means they were sampling the same people repeatedly.
Also his base are a different group of people from Republicans, they are often a subset of Republicans.
You can go on Twitter, Youtube or any comment section and they are all saying "MAGA is dead", "I didn't vote for this" or some sort of signalling they are against a war with Iran.
yongjik 2 hours ago [-]
I'm willing to buy that YouGov is a low quality poll, but you can't be suggesting twitter and youtube comment sections as a better alternative. Half of those comments might not even be human.
ExaltedPunt 5 hours ago [-]
This is literally the sort of response I was complaining about.
Trump's base have been consistently against wars in the middle-east and him being too close to Israel has been a consistent criticism of Trump from way back in 2016/2017. So his supporters have been consistent about this for almost a decade. So I don't think your assessment is correct at all.
It been almost a decade now since Trump has entered politics and there has been one thing that been consistent throughout this period. That is the inability for otherwise intelligent people to state the beliefs of Trump's supporters accurately.
Timon3 5 hours ago [-]
Again: I do genuinely hope that you're correct.
But the pattern I've seen is that it doesn't matter whether his supporters have consistently been against something, because they'll change their opinion once Trump actually does that thing. They start off by levying some criticisms, but quickly change over the coming days.
We'll see soon enough who is right. My prediction is: in one week, there'll be broad support in his base for the bombing. I'm sure enough of it that I'd be willing to bet money on it, and I'll gladly come back here and admit that I was wrong should things not turn out how I expect them to.
ExaltedPunt 4 hours ago [-]
> Again: I do genuinely hope that you're correct.
I don't believe you. You went for the old "they are all brainwashed" routine, specifically after I complained about people doing that. Which tells me you have bought into partisan politics.
> But the pattern I've seen is that it doesn't matter whether his supporters have consistently been against something, because they'll change their opinion once Trump actually does that thing. They start off by levying some criticisms, but quickly change over the coming days.
No they haven't. They've consistently been against his supporting of the COVID Vaccine (to the point where Trump doesn't mention it anymore), Against wars in the middle-east.
The pro-Trump people were complaining about his bombing of the Syrian Airfield back in 2017. That was spun heavily by the media at the time.
You consistently keep claiming this to be a truism but it isn't true at all. This is wholly disingenuous or you don't know what you are talking about.
> We'll see soon enough who is right. My prediction is: in one week, there'll be broad support in his base for the bombing. I'm sure enough of it that I'd be willing to bet money on it, and I'll gladly come back here and admit that I was wrong should things not turn out how I expect them to.
Even if you were wrong, I suspect that you will point to some AstroTurf'd poll and declare victory.
Timon3 4 hours ago [-]
> I don't believe you. You went for the old "they are all brainwashed" routine, specifically after I complained about people doing that. Which tells me you have bought into partisan politics.
I'm doing that "routine" because it's what I've been seeing time and time again over the last years. I keep seeing lines drawn in the sand, those lines being stepped over, and everybody suddenly just accepting it and calling everyone who still keeps to those lines "RINOs" until they fully disappear.
But if you can't extend this much good faith to me, we have nothing to discuss. Good day.
cempaka 22 hours ago [-]
Either they believe it is no longer necessary, or they are facing some other set of constraints that is making it less feasible.
MangoToupe 22 hours ago [-]
I've got to imagine the israel lobby is putting an enormous amount of pressure on DC to attack.
20 hours ago [-]
hearsathought 19 hours ago [-]
Imagine if Putin got Trump to bomb ukraine for him. Imagine if Xi got Trump to bomb Taiwan for him. There would be a crisis in this country as the media would be attacking trump for being a stooge to a foreign power.
How is it possible that a foreign leader, Netanyahu ( who has lied in the past to get us to attack iraq ), can get Trump to bomb Iran and nobody, especially in the media, bats an eye.
The media is focused on the bombing, but shouldn't the focus be on foreign control over much of the US government? After years of soul searching over the iraq fiasco and the lies can we still be in this position again?
jmyeet 19 hours ago [-]
I sympathize with people thinking Israel is wagging the dog but I don't think it's true.
Israel exists in the way that it does and does what it does because we allow it to. It is a toolf our imperial interests, not the other way around. To argue otherwise absolves us of our responsibility and can often descend into antisemitism (which I oppose).
We have described Israel as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in a region we want to destabilize becuase it has resources that are important to us.
Oh and this is uniparty too. Don't kid yourselves if you think things would be different if the Democrats were in power. It would not. There is universal agreement on US foreign policy across both parties. The events in Gaza began under a Democratic president who did absolutely nothing to rein Israel in where he could've ended it with a phone call.
There is no opposition to what Israel is doing. Even now, Democratic leaders in Congress aren't complaining about what the president is doing and has done. They're complaining that they weren't consulted. And not to oppose it but to have the opportunity to express their support.
And yes, the media is absolutely complicit in what's going on too.
fuckyah 19 hours ago [-]
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19 hours ago [-]
hackernoops 19 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sadaaqat 21 hours ago [-]
I can see many problems with his plan.
20 hours ago [-]
typeofhuman 19 hours ago [-]
Weird how this is front page but a post for the wiki page of the Northrop B-2 Spirit gets flagged.
A discussion of a major world event makes a lot more sense than a discussion of something tangentially related to a major world event. People sensibly flag the tangential stuff as effective dupes - it wouldn't really make sense to have a front page discussion about the event as well as a front page discussion about a plane.
typeofhuman 11 hours ago [-]
The post about the stealth bomber doesn't have to be front page. I just disagree it should be flagged.
19 hours ago [-]
aaron695 22 hours ago [-]
The bunker busters will not have worked on Fordow.
(It will be the first time a GBU-57A/B has been used in war, which is interesting)
They needed troops on the ground. Israel was going to do this.
It's possible they have just collapsed the entrances.
Trumps comments - https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump You have a loop, @Osint613 reposted Trump as "Fordow is gone" which Trump reposted. Neither of them have any idea.
(Natanz, Isfahan were already hit and damaged by Israel, the US didn't bother to bunker bust them, it was Tomahawks from subs )
You need a tactical nuke to destroy Fordow, but the USA considers tactical the same as strategic, so it would be very unlikely. Russia could, since they put tactical in a different category.
lunar-whitey 20 hours ago [-]
Expert opinions seem to differ on this. We will know once enough satellite and signal intelligence data has been analyzed for US leadership to ascertain whether further strikes may be required.
aaron695 19 hours ago [-]
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Havoc 20 hours ago [-]
Saw reports that natanz did get 2x too
tourist2d 19 hours ago [-]
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xnx 21 hours ago [-]
Did I miss the part where Congress declared war or is that passe?
oceansky 20 hours ago [-]
Even Vietnam wasn't formally declared as a war. Last formal declaration was WWII.
soraminazuki 20 hours ago [-]
As I understand it, congress still authorized the use of force. Nowadays, the president effectively bypasses congress using the 2 decades old authorization for the use of force against the overly broad threat of "terror."
wmf 20 hours ago [-]
It's not a war, it's a limited engagement or whatever.
endemic 20 hours ago [-]
A “special operation”
sealeck 20 hours ago [-]
A "special military operation", perhaps?
goodluckchuck 20 hours ago [-]
A declaration of war is an invitation for the other side to attack. Rather than being a restraint against war, empowering Congress to declare war allows them to force a potentially unwilling president into war.
20 hours ago [-]
mindslight 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
0xy 20 hours ago [-]
Both parties wilfully fund genocide and mess around with regime change. Trump does seem more restrained than most presidents, but it's hard to agree with this move.
All the Middle East calamities have begun with targeted and limited operations. Not believable anymore.
mindslight 2 hours ago [-]
Sure. I don't feel an establishment politician would have directly attacked Iran like this, but the establishment has been sabre rattling at Iran for a long time, so who really knows.
The point is those arguments were often brought up by people justifying why they voted for Trump instead of prioritizing other issues, as if the guy represented some kind of reform rather than just a more base and brazen looter.
20 hours ago [-]
hagbard_c 22 hours ago [-]
While it is hard to predict what the future will being and while the middle east has been a hotbed for conflict since times immemorial it is likely that taking the Theocratic regime in Iran out of the equation is a net-positive when it comes to limiting the amount of conflict in the region. I intentionally do not use the word 'peace' because I do not see peace ever breaking out there given the historical record and the many sources of conflict.
hkpack 21 hours ago [-]
Destabilizing Iran will make another migration crisis in Europe, will divide it politically because of the rise of anti immigrant far right, and finally set up the scene for a big european war for which russia is preparing.
If US hopes to not be involved in it, it will be up for the surprise.
sealeck 20 hours ago [-]
You think migration of refugees will lead to... civil war in Europe? There's a lot of space in Europe – it could accomodate even all 90 million Iranian refugees and not collapse (let us hope Iranian civilians not made into refugees by Trump and Netanyahu).
mindslight 20 hours ago [-]
Colin Powell, is that you? How have you been, man? Have you been keeping in touch with John Yoo? That guy has been on fire lately! btw how'd those things with the Taliban and Saddam work out?
ExaltedPunt 20 hours ago [-]
One of the things he was good on was being generally more against wars than other US presidents. That unfortunately is no longer true.
mindslight 20 hours ago [-]
Trump was never against war, as demonstrated by his calling Putin's aggression "genius". He was just generally critical of everything the US did, because fundamentally he hates our country. There are a boat load of earnest good-faith criticisms of our society and government. Trump excels at tapping into that frustration across the whole spectrum, which is how his cabinet is a circus of malcontents with no actual constructive ideas.
ExaltedPunt 20 hours ago [-]
> Trump wasn't against war, as demonstrated by his calling Putin's aggression "genius"
I think I know what statement you are referring to and it wasn't an endorsement of war.
Recognising someone for doing something well even if it is amoral/immoral, isn't an endorsement of person or action.
e.g.
I don't like George Galloway or how he operates as a politician, nor do I like his politics, or his policies. I personally think that he is a scumbag.
However he is a very effective politician and his strategies, tactics and his communication skills are second to none. He is very good at chewing out BBC presenters which is pure Schadenfreude.
> He was just generally critical of anything the US did, because fundamentally he hates our country
You are making a similar mistake. Being critical of your own country doesn't mean that you hate it.
I live England. I am English. I love England. Do I hate a lot of things about my country currently? yes I do. Do I hate the country? no I don't (mostly).
mindslight 19 hours ago [-]
People with morals don't sing the praises of other people for immorally executing well, rather they view it as an unfortunate failing. And "genius" is solidly in the territory of praise - contrast with your distancing of "very effective politician" and "don't like".
That's just one touchpoint though. There's a larger but handwavier argument about how Trump's whole technique is to engage in negative-sum destructive aggression, causing pain to other parties so they capitulate and "make a deal". War is entirely on-brand for him.
Really though we should probably be relieved that he turned his focus to a foreign enemy rather than spending most of his energy escalating attacks against the State of California.
> Being critical of your own country doesn't mean that you hate it
Read the sentence right after the one you quoted. I most certainly understand good faith criticism! I'm a libertarian - I actually care about many of the issues currently being burnt on the bonfire of credibility by Trump and the fake "libertarians" that actually only care about their own "rights".
ExaltedPunt 11 hours ago [-]
> People with morals don't sing the praises of other people for immorally executing well, rather they view it as an unfortunate failing. And "genius" is solidly in the territory of praise - contrast with your distancing of "very effective politician" and "don't like".
You are deliberately misunderstanding the point being made, while simultaneously making an argument for tone policing. It is quite tiresome.
I stated that George Galloway is a complete scumbag. I think he is utterly amoral. I can still praise his (quite frankly) amazing rhetorical ability that gets even someone like myself who dislikes him, to cheer for him. That is how good he is. Does that make me immoral for stating an obvious fact? no it doesn't. I suspect you know this though.
The exact same logic applies to Trump's statements about Putin.
> Really though we should probably be relieved that he turned his focus to a foreign enemy rather than spending most of his energy escalating attacks against the State of California.
Quelling actual riots and enforcing immigration law is not attacking a state. I don't want to get into an argument over this, because I know there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
I think the gangs, violent thugs and state governors that encourage law breaking (that what he was doing) should be crushed. I say this as someone that used to call themselves a Libertarian.
> Read the sentence right after the one you quoted.
I did. It doesn't negate what I said. Even if Trump criticism were made to tap into such a feeling, that doesn't mean they are incorrect, or that he hates the country.
Tony Blair said something to effect "You need to actually obtain power to be able to enact the change". That means manipulating the voter base. Every effective politician does this btw.
> I most certainly understand good faith criticism! I'm a libertarian - I actually care about many of the issues currently being burnt on the bonfire of credibility by Trump and the fake "libertarians" that actually only care about their own "rights".
Libertarians are just as bad as any other group in engaging in bad faith arguments.
As for the credibility of Libertarians, that was in tatters well before Trump. I used to call myself a Libertarian (a very lonely position in the UK). I realised that many of the people that claimed to be one had never read any of the foundational material and what Libertarianism meant was "I want to smoke weed". You just have to watch some of the convention footage of the Libertarian party conference (which as I understand was the third biggest party after the Dems/GOP in the US) to understand that what I am saying is 100% correct.
I suspect though that isn't want you referring to. I suspect you are lambasting the Libertarian Party under the Chairmanship of Angela McArdle and some of the other more Right-wing Libertarians associated with Trump. All I can say about her Chairmanship is she managed to get Ross Ulbricht freed, which makes her objectively more effective than most Libertarians.
mindslight 4 hours ago [-]
No, I am not "tone policing". I am talking about deliberate nuance. You were careful to reject endorsing George Galloway - not just once, but again even stronger the second time. Because you're treading a balance between praising one qualified aspect, and condemning the overall person. The more you praise that one aspect, the more you want to make sure it's clear you're distancing yourself from that person over all.
Trump does not distance himself from Putin in this way - rather he compliments often, and then only occasionally backpedals when pressed. The sensible interpretation is that overall he supports Putin, and the occasional critical remark is just part of his signature contradictory word salad.
> Quelling actual riots and enforcing immigration law is not attacking a state
It is the job of the local and state governments to strike the balance between the right to protest and keeping order. The elected officials were handling that just fine - there was no "riot", especially not some kind of ongoing one not being handled by LAPD. Deputizing the national guard against the direction of the state governor to perform domestic enforcement duties is an attack on that state authority. It had the exact opposite effect of restoring order, resulting in a predictable escalation for a TV stunt.
But if you're drinking this level of fascist Kool-Aid, then there's really no point in continuing this discussion. I do have to wonder why you're so invested in American politics not even being American though. I'm guessing you're emboldened by not actually having to suffer the inevitable poor results of Trump's destructive bluster-and-back-down approach. Contrast with say, if you lived in Los Angeles.
(And sure, it's great that Ulbricht was freed. But I'm not going to be placated by one small bone from an overwhelmingly freedom-destroying fascist movement)
ExaltedPunt 17 minutes ago [-]
> No, I am not "tone policing". I am talking about deliberate nuance. You were careful to reject endorsing George Galloway - not just once, but again even stronger the second time. Because you're treading a balance between praising one qualified aspect, and condemning the overall person. The more you praise that one aspect, the more you want to make sure it's clear you're distancing yourself from that person over all.
Yes you are doing exactly that. "Nuance" is a cop-out. The logic is precisely the same.
> Trump does not distance himself from Putin in this way - rather he compliments often, and then only occasionally backpedals when pressed. The sensible interpretation is that overall he supports Putin, and the occasional critical remark is just part of his signature contradictory word salad.
No that isn't the sensible interpretation. You are doing mental gymnastics.
> It is the job of the local and state governments to strike the balance between the right to protest and keeping order. The elected officials were handling that just fine - there was no "riot", especially not some kind of ongoing one not being handled by LAPD. Deputizing the national guard against the direction of the state governor to perform domestic enforcement duties is an attack on that state authority. It had the exact opposite effect of restoring order, resulting in a predictable escalation for a TV stunt.
Dude the footage can be found on Youtube of the riots. I also remember watching in real time with American friends over live streams of the riots in the summer of 2020. I forget which city it was (Minneapolis) but I saw this huge building collapse live. So please don't gaslight me that the local government was handling these things just fine. They weren't.
> But if you're drinking this level of fascist Kool-Aid,
No, I've barely looked at the news at all over the last month. The weather in the UK has been exceptionally nice and I've been spending my time cycling.
I have watched live-streams of riots and seen stores being looted in real time, guys burning cars etc. There is one guy that literally rides around the city on his electric motorbike thing and documents it that a friend and I were watching the other night.
Apparently I imagined all of the things that were captured on candid camera?
> then there's really no point in continuing this discussion. I do have to wonder why you're so invested in American politics not even being American though.
I am interested in American politics because I have many American friends that I speak to regularly. I have also Canadian friends. Most of them are actually left wing.
The reason I don't pay attention to Politics in the UK is very stale, boring, depressing and I know my vote is literally meaningless. Even people in my family that were very much "You must go out and vote" have told me in private that they no longer bother because all they get is more of the same. My father told me he has never voted because he knows whoever you vote for, you end up get shafted anyway.
> I'm guessing you're emboldened by not actually having to suffer the inevitable poor results of Trump's destructive bluster-and-back-down approach. Contrast with say, if you lived in Los Angeles.
I actually know someone that lives in Los Angeles and I talk to them about this very subject maybe a few days ago. They told me that if you live in certain parts of the city, you may never even know there were horrific problems in the other parts.
BTW. I live near Manchester and recently visited Cardiff. Both cities while much smaller are having similar problems to Los Angeles. There are a large number of drug addicts that are literally passed out on the streets, there are homeless people everywhere (my friend regularly has to walk over homeless people camping in his doorstep) and both cities are in a state of decay.
I've seen plenty of real time footage of Los Angeles and other American cities that have similar problems. Unfortunately the same thing is now happening in our cities.
Freedom2 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
lunarboy 21 hours ago [-]
Always amazes me how right leaning this site's populace seems to be
whateveracct 21 hours ago [-]
contrarian-leaning
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
Right-leaning is giving them too much credit. It's just self-leaning and, like many other political groups, Trump just said the transparently false stuff that he needed to in order to appeal to them.
The dumbest and/or most self-interested of many demographics, it turns out, were happy to be tricked!
buzzerbetrayed 19 hours ago [-]
It amazes you that the popular viewpoint in America is also found on HN?
lunarboy 17 hours ago [-]
Yes because I would not expect HN populace to be the same distribution as the general US. Just like how I would find it strange if medical professionals had more anti-vaxx than I expected.
temptemptemp111 6 hours ago [-]
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barbazoo 20 hours ago [-]
Unlikely for a forum have a single opinion.
an0malous 20 hours ago [-]
Hence “popular”
alephnerd 22 hours ago [-]
Asking HN for political analysis is like asking Politico for an in depth analysis on ML capabilities.
There are a handful of users on HN who have domain experience or knowledge in policymaking due to professional adjacencies (IP Law, High Finance, Space/Defense Tech VC, etc) but get drowned out.
Freedom2 22 hours ago [-]
I agree completely. Try to mention that on this site though and you get replies such as "we're not the same as other social media sites!", or some variant of the community here being the smartest in the room.
At tech? Maybe. At everything else? Not so much.
kif 21 hours ago [-]
I think it’s fair to say you need another kind of domain experience to explain Trump.
tehjoker 22 hours ago [-]
the kind of domain expertise you describe results in a different kind of imperialist psychosis. you should look to analysis coming from communists, Brazil, China, Iran, Palestine, Yemen, etc. These groups have a much more clear-eyed view of US policy.
hagbard_c 22 hours ago [-]
He did order the commander of the IRGC to be taken out during his last term while simultaneously pushing the Abraham accords with several Sunni nations. The "peace through strength" concept is only believable when it is clear that strength will be used - call it Chekhov's gun of international relations.
19 hours ago [-]
sadaaqat 21 hours ago [-]
As putins water bearer Trump will likely sign a meaningless peace agreement
andrepd 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
baxtr 21 hours ago [-]
He wanted a better deal! Don’t you understand?!
sealeck 21 hours ago [-]
Either there will be an _extremely_ bloody and long disintegration of government in Iran, or Trump will probably agree a slightly worse version of the Iran nuclear deal (and now the Iranians will know - once and for all - that the only way for them to remain in power is to get the bomb as soon as possible).
jm4 22 hours ago [-]
Admittedly, I was one of the people who wasn’t impressed with the deal Obama made in 2016. I didn’t like that it allowed Iran to keep enriching uranium or that we paid them.
In recent years, that deal has been looking better every day. We are undoubtedly worse off today than we would be had Trump left the deal in place. This is a bad situation.
YZF 22 hours ago [-]
It was just not a good deal. It was more like kicking the can down the road and funding the regime. That's not good for Iranians and not good for anyone else.
lunarboy 21 hours ago [-]
Human problems are always in conflict, in cycle. How was that a bad deal? Never let perfect be the enemy of good
It also just as well could have been us making another deal to extend the time, but just because Obama's deal was "not good enough" this the outcome we want?
What kind of argument is that
avoutos 21 hours ago [-]
The Iran deal was far from perfect, especially taking into account the ancillary payments to Iran. I find it hard to believe that the oil-rich country of Iran is interested in nuclear energy for purely altruistic means.
It wasn’t a good deal. It was also probably the best deal that could have been achieved at any point in the past 20 years. More importantly, it would have kept things on an even keel and kept us talking to each other for as long as we both honored the deal. It was an opportunity to see if we could build a little bit of trust and make another deal later. Yes, it kicked the can down the road. It also represented a willingness on the part of both countries to try to avoid a conflict even though we both had reasons to want one.
It’s possible it would have been a complete failure. We will never know. What we do know for sure is that we have had fewer options for dealing with the situation since we pulled out of the deal and now we are at war.
Our country’s handling of Iran has been nothing short of a spectacular blunder. Two administrations have tried to negotiate out of the hole Trump got us into when he tore up the deal. The buffoon actually thought he would cancel the deal and make a better one. Now, after 20+ years of criticizing the Iraq war and campaigning three times on not starting new wars, he is the trigger man getting us into a new one when we are least prepared for it.
fallingknife 21 hours ago [-]
I guess we'll see what the fallout from this attack is, but if there isn't anything major (and that's where my money is) then it would seem that just dropping bunker busters on their nuclear facilities and then going home was actually the best solution all along.
jm4 9 hours ago [-]
That is pure fantasy. You don’t launch an unprovoked attack and simply go home without any consequences. What we and Israel have done to Iran in recent weeks is akin to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. Furthermore, if we were legitimately without any other options it is because of our own failure to honor the deal we made in 2018.
You can be assured that there will be a response. What it will be and for how long I don’t know. What I do know is that diplomacy is completely off the table. It’s possible we are dealing with the consequences of this for decades.
YZF 21 hours ago [-]
The problem in Iran is the government or shall we say the dictatorship. I'm not sure how the US could have/should have handled Iran since the revolution. You're naive if you think the current Iranian regime has any interest in aligning itself to western views via deals. It wants to cement its control, broaden its sphere of influence:
Deals are tactical. They're not about shifting world views.
I'm not sure the US and Iran are really "at war right now". This is very different than Iraq. But I do agree intervention has risks. The problem is that no intervention also has risks. Take for example Obama's lack of appetite to intervene in Syria. Contrast to Turkey and Israel that effectively intervened recently in Syria and force a regime change that at least so far is more or less holding out.
oa335 21 hours ago [-]
> I'm not sure the US and Iran are really "at war right now"
It’s amazing what decades of propaganda has done to Western discourse. Now somehow bombing another country isn’t war.
YZF 21 hours ago [-]
I think there's a difference between one attack and a full blown war.
The US has had many bombings of other countries without a full out war:
I guess you could say that during the bombing campaign in Yemen until the ceasefire (and maybe now) they were at "war".
Were Israel and Iran "at war" when they exchanged blows a year ago?
oa335 20 hours ago [-]
Yes - all of those instances count as war to me.
What to you counts as “war”? When the countries fire back?
YZF 20 hours ago [-]
Something like is going on between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Iran (borderline). The Iraq war. The Afghanistan war. A prolonged period of hostilities.
Something you would look back at and call "The US Iran War". I don't think the previous acts of violence, or the current one, between these two meets the mark yet. And it's not clear if this one will. Iran can't really do much right now and it's not clear whether the US will go a lot further here.
E.g. we probably aren't going to look back at the hostilities with Yemen and call them the "US-Yemen war" or the "US Houthis war" like we look at Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Or as Putin would put it, it's a special military operation (yeah yeah, that one is a war).
runako 21 hours ago [-]
> I'm not sure the US and Iran are really "at war right now"
Curious about this. Are we not technically at war because they haven't retaliated yet?
Americans definitely believed we were at war with Japan immediately after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
YZF 21 hours ago [-]
My common interpretation of a war is that it involves the continuous exchange of violence on both sides over some time. An isolated bombing operation isn't what I think of as a war. Israel and Iran are at war for sure. The US and Iran, we'll see. It's possible Iran will calculate that it is not in their benefit to wage an open war on the US.
There's is already a history of violence between Iran and the USA. Was that a war? When Iranian funded militias attacked American bases is that war?
Anyways, that's how I think about it.
nemothekid 21 hours ago [-]
>You're naive if you think the current Iranian regime has any interest in aligning itself to western views via deals.
You are going to have take a step back and convince me why I should care about US hegemonic interests in the region. Iran is it's own nation - I don't see why we should be "dealing" with them in the first place. If you really care about the profit margins of Aramco and ExxonMobil (the whole reason were in this mess in first place) you should lead with that so that others know why you care about what a sovereign country does.
amluto 20 hours ago [-]
> Iran is it's own nation - I don't see why we should be "dealing" with them in the first place
Iran spends rather large amounts of money funding various groups that are adverse to US interests and operate well outside Iran’s borders. Pretending that Iran is its own country and can thus be ignored is not an effective policy.
nemothekid 20 hours ago [-]
>spends rather large amounts of money funding various groups that are adverse to US interests and operate well outside Iran’s borders.
1. This describes many countries that we haven't invaded that I'm not sure you are being serious.
2. You will need to be specific. Which US interests? The interests of Californians or of Saudi Aramaco?
3. America is propoganda giant number one, and China has seemed to come up just fine despite America spending hundreds of billions trying to convince the world the communists in China are eating dirt.
I'm not convinced that this is a good use time or money for the American tax payer. I'm fully convinced American hegomonic decline is fully self-inflected and the trillions wasted in Afghanistan did more to hurt American than any backwards goat farmer in the middle east could ever accomplish.
YZF 20 hours ago [-]
I honestly don't care about the oil companies. I'll lead with that.
I'm not an American but my argument would be that a free and stable world is better for the US.
A regime like Iran's that has killed Americans, is openly calling the US "The Great Satan", is supporting militias in places like Iraq that attack Americans. That funds, supports and trains organizations the US considers terrorist organizations. Is abusing its own citizenry and actively seeks to export its values to other countries. Is supplying weapons to Russia for attacking Ukraine. This sort of regime can't just do whatever it wants under the label of "its own nation" since what its doing impacts others.
The US is the big superpower of the "west" and the "free world". For the most part it is its deterrence against Russia and China that is standing in the way of those doing whatever they want (e.g. China taking Taiwan by force). I don't think the world would be a better place if the US just stands back.
All that said, intervention, and use of force, needs to be sensible/reasonable/calculated. It's not easy to say where this is going. But it's also not easy to say where it would have gone otherwise. I can also understand Americans not having an appetite for any of this after Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. But to contrast that I think failure to intervene in the Arab Spring led to pretty bad consequences, prolonged civil wars, a refugee crisis, etc. So perhaps some intervention and support would have helped. Also the US withdrawal and lack of support to democracy in Russia were probably factors in the reversal of that country back to where it is today.
Anyways, that's my very long opinion on this topic. But I can totally understand Americans not wanting any part of this. But don't think that you can just hide, things that happen in the world impact you.
nemothekid 20 hours ago [-]
>I'm not an American but my argument would be that a free and stable world is better for the US.
You aren't arguing for a free and stable world. You are arguing for a total hegemonic power for US interests - and thats my point. You are taking the position of "this is what is good for US companies and interests" and working backwards from there.
It's remarkable you use the "were stopping China from doing whatever they want", but you don't stop and think that there are other people who have legitimate concerns in stopping the US from doing what they want. Replace China with the US and Taiwan with Palestine. Aren't we doing to Palestine what you claim we should stop China from doing to Taiwan? At the very least it comes across hypocritical to claim you are in it for a "free and stable world" when that actually means "the US should get to invade whoever it wants".
Furthermore, the same things you say about Iran, you could argue about North Korea. North Korea has killed Americans, they have an entire month dedicated to hating America (it starts next month!) and openly funds corporate espionage attacks that drains billions from Americans. Despite that do you honestly believe, that the world would be safer if we started dropping GBU-43s on North Korean children? Honestly answer me that.
Despite what you can say about North Korean regime - don't you believe a North Korea, with Nukes mind you, is far more preferable than the alternative? Where America is dropping bombs on North Korean every 5 years? Which do you think is actually better?
Why does North Korea - who again, has done all the same, and more, than Iran get a pass from the military industrial complex? Isn't North Korea clearly the bigger threat when it comes to peace as defined by the parameters you laid out? Once you interrogate this line of thinking it makes 0 sense - and anyone who thinks candidly realizes the contradiction: ironically, once our so called "enemies" have nukes, children stop being vaporized by bombs.
21 hours ago [-]
golemiprague 21 hours ago [-]
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ivape 21 hours ago [-]
No US politician will ever get support from the public to send ground troops anywhere for a very long time unless its literally against Hitler.
financypants 22 hours ago [-]
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e40 21 hours ago [-]
They use the template for everything. It’s an odd thing to get worked up about.
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le-mark 21 hours ago [-]
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tokioyoyo 19 hours ago [-]
China is doing really fine right now, why would it destabilize its own region? Free PR, outstanding manufacturing capabilities, a lot of manpower, most amount of trades, US being written off as unreliable partner and etc.
dataviz1000 19 hours ago [-]
This. I spent 6 weeks in Taiwan last year traveling around the island. Unless there is a US President as brave as Bill Clinton who put two aircraft carrier strike groups between the island and the mainland in support of democratic elections, it will take 3 days to take over the island and not a single shot will be fired. Since the chip lithography systems can be shut remotely, there isn't any reason to attack the island.
tokioyoyo 18 hours ago [-]
Pretty much. My understanding of current US realpolitiks is that leadership finally realized that they can't really do much about Chinese superiority in every single competing industry, and all these unwelcoming outcomes are just freak outs and bunch of "hail mary"s with the hopes it can somehow reverse something. It's just not acceptable from an American PoV to not perceived as "best and strongest", so everyone is having a hard time coping with it.
Japan kinda went through the same problem in 80s/90s, but from a different angle. The problem is, US can't pull the same on China as it did with Japan.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
This is probably the wrong take.
20 hours ago [-]
soraminazuki 19 hours ago [-]
The worst part is, it's only been half a year since Trump took office. We're experiencing crisis after crisis in the world stage, and it's the worst possible time to have someone unstable as him in charge of the world's most powerful military. Who knows what's going to happen in the next, sigh, 3.5 years with this shortage of adults who know patience and diplomacy.
standardUser 20 hours ago [-]
It's almost impossible to imagine Netanyahu acting so emboldened under any previous US president. And it's hard to deny that Trump now looks extremely diminished on the world stage, between his leading from behind with Israel over both Gaza and Iran and his comprehensive failure to have any impact on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
Do you have a world stage palantir?
ImJamal 20 hours ago [-]
Israel (not under Netanyahu) stole nuclear secrets from the US and killed a bunch of sailors, damaging a Navy ship in the process.
They have always been emboldened.
mysterEFrank 19 hours ago [-]
This needs a citation. Israel developed their nukes 50 years ago with the assistance of Jewish nuclear physicists from around the world and french materials. They didn't need to steal nuclear secrets.
Thanks for the correction. I misremembered secrets vs materials. Regardless, it is not a good look for them.
I-M-S 20 hours ago [-]
> It's almost impossible to imagine Netanyahu acting so emboldened under any previous US president
Gaza happened under Biden's watch, and continued under Trump.
protocolture 20 hours ago [-]
Yeah but Netanyahu tried the same shit regarding Iran with the last few presidents, including the previous incarnation of Trump who had better advisers.
This is the first time the lie has worked to this extent.
booleandilemma 19 hours ago [-]
Worked in what way? Preventing Iran (the country whose motto seems to be "Death to America") from making a nuclear bomb?
protocolture 14 hours ago [-]
Netanyahu has warned that Iran is minutes away from the bomb for the last 30 years. Trumps own intelligence community was telling us that Iran is incapable of producing a bomb just a week or so ago.
Death to America is a great motto, but that's all it really is, they sadly lack the capability to follow through with it. With or without these latest strikes.
While Trump is a complete pushover, Biden was also well in pocket.
Maybe Harris wouldn't have gone this far, but the democrats were happy to carry water for Israel for a long time.
I'd argue their unflinching support was also a key to priming the American public for this moment.
Fully and unquestioningly supporting whatever Israel does is practically a requirement for all American politicians.
le-mark 11 hours ago [-]
> While Trump is a complete pushover, Biden was also well in pocket.
There no evidence to support that. US policy has been to fully support Isreal, full stop. At least under Biden there was talk of suspending arms supplies due to Gaza, Trump just wants a shot at that beach front real estate. Not comparable at all.
anon84873628 20 hours ago [-]
If Trump is unstable then how can you predict his actions? How is this an example of not acting in time / for deterrence, when it was in fact a preemptive strike? (And he did the whole "2 weeks" ruse).
jjk166 19 hours ago [-]
In the same way you can predict what will happen to a bridge that is unstable. It doesn't matter which bad option he winds up choosing, the fact he's not choosing the good option is what makes him unpredictable.
anon84873628 9 hours ago [-]
Look, I'm no Trump supporter and not trying to defend his actions. But this comment just doesn't explain anything. Why would the Russians or Chinese choose to drive over the unstable bridge? The 'bad option he chooses' could be "bomb Three Gorges Dam" or something.
I'm also no fan of war or playing world police. I don't know whether destroying Iranian nuclear sites was ultimately the right or wrong decision. But there is clearly enough debate here in the rest of the comments that it's not obviously the wrong option. Even a broken clock can be right twice a day.
BolexNOLA 19 hours ago [-]
We can very easily predict Trump dropping the ball again. No one has gone broke betting against the incompetence of him and his administration.
anon84873628 9 hours ago [-]
Was this dropping the ball? There seems to be a lot of debate about whether it was ultimately right or wrong long term.
In any case, it certainly doesn't weigh towards "not belligerent". I'm no Trump supporter or apologist, I just don't see how one can claim that this action changes the calculus for Russia and China. Maybe if he really had fully abandoned Ukraine then yes. But he's been happy to attack Yemen and Iran (and possibly Greenland for that matter) so why would China think they are immune? I suspect he also harbors more racism towards China than Russia.
transcriptase 19 hours ago [-]
“It’s over for Trump this time, he’s finished!” - You (2015,2016,2017,2018,2019,2020,2021,2022,2023,2024,2025)
const_cast 17 hours ago [-]
Stupid people being back by other people doesn't mean they aren't stupid. It actually means the contrary - there's more stupid people than we previously thought...
I'm being a bit mean I suppose, it's not actually stupidity. It's naivety and fierce propaganda campaigns. Everyone longs for a simpler time and the domestic economic struggles of the US are plain.
soraminazuki 19 hours ago [-]
Being incompetent and being popular are unfortunately not exclusionary. Or are you saying that elected officials doesn't make mistakes?
cloverich 18 hours ago [-]
OP predicted Trump will mess up not that he'll lose an election. His electorate is largely supporting him via emotional response, hence his constant appeal to emotions, morality, demonization, etc - it works very well. The title of the book on my manipulated mothers shelf is "Democrats hate America" not "Iranian nuclear enrichment policy” — because this isn’t about policy, it’s about identity. Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t have to withstand scrutiny; it just has to resonate. And it resonates because it offers a simple moral binary: good vs. evil, us vs. them. That’s why failures, scandals, or even authoritarian gestures don’t shake his base — they’re not evaluating him on outcomes, but on whether he reflects their emotional reality. The real danger isn’t just that he might “mess up,” but that the political incentives now reward this kind of performative grievance over competence.
mensetmanusman 19 hours ago [-]
If Trump is unstable, and Biden didn’t know his family member’s names, what kind of joke is this?
cloverich 18 hours ago [-]
So i don't buy into trumps instability being a factor here nor bidens deteriorating mental health as president being ok. Yet i still think this is false equivalence.
I've watched many people deteriorate mentally and their are many routes. Biden was clearly the "i misplace stuff" route, not "i will now attack an ally".
He definitely shouldn't have been allowed to run for president again but Trump is far more belligerent. I'm not even necessarily opposed to his actions in Iran. But he's now verbally, fiscally, or actually attacked several allies and enemies. He'll likely attack more. I think it's fine to argue for or against his actions. But it's silly to equate the scale of his actions, or risk of mental deterioration, with Biden. The stakes are much higher, the strong allies and enemies are all making reactive bold moves in response. Things are moving fast now.
mindslight 17 hours ago [-]
Yes, thank you. Anyone who has taken care of old people recognized Biden as the passive type that was content to sit in a chair while other people did stuff around him - which wasn't all that problematic given our bureaucratic delegation-based style of governance. Meanwhile Trump is the manic aggressive type. The more you try to get him to recognize his limitations the more he denies he has any and acts out to prove it.
827a 20 hours ago [-]
How do you, logically, draw the line from "cavalier use of deadly force" to "our enemies are going to take bolder action against US allies"? That leap of logic doesn't make sense; its a leap of pseudologic someone speaking from fear would make.
If anything, a better standpoint is: Illogical and cavalier use of deadly force should scare our enemies, because it makes expression of our nation's military power more unpredictable. If China invades Taiwan; Trump might just blow up the Three Gorges Dam. Other Presidents might move with care, logic, and intrinsic sanctity for human life; Trump doesn't.
soraminazuki 19 hours ago [-]
> a leap of pseudologic someone speaking from fear would make
How do you reconcile that with:
> scare our enemies (and they) might move with care, logic, and intrinsic sanctity for human life
827a 19 hours ago [-]
I never suggested that our enemies might move with care, logic, and intrinsic sanctity for human life. I suggested that Trump's disregard for many of these cornerstones of national leadership might cause them to not move at all.
soraminazuki 19 hours ago [-]
It's literally what you wrote and continue to argue for. But anyways, I strongly disagree with the premise that threats and violence results in deescalation.
I was not very happy with the settlements of West Bank ongoing for decades, but kind of thought every side is to blame and the situation is complex. It's not complex anymore.
dyauspitr 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah I’m having a hard time giving the actual people of Israel the benefit of the doubt these days.
fldskfjdslkfj 21 hours ago [-]
Prediction: Iran will fold somewhat quickly and history will remember this as good move.
hkpack 21 hours ago [-]
Alternative prediction:
Destabilized Iran will make another migration crisis in Europe, will divide it politically because of the rise of anti immigrant far right, and finally set the scene for a full scale european war with russia, followed by other counties on both sides.
US will be forced to join and millions of its citizen will die in WW3.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
Alternate prediction: Iran - a country detested in much of the middle east - getting nuclear weapons will quickly lead to proliferation as other middle east countries feel compelled to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs to counter the threat of Iran.
This is why the west has been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades.
ericmay 21 hours ago [-]
Why would there be more migrants to Europe from Iran?
hkpack 21 hours ago [-]
The same reason there were millions of refugees from Syria or Libya or Ukraine or because of any other instability in the region.
There is just no much other places for people to run when shit hits fan.
ericmay 21 hours ago [-]
Maybe, but the EU has different policies and a different understanding of immigration now compared to say 2010-2023, right? Also those countries you mentioned are a bit closer to Europe compared to Iran.
But I’m also not sure that the situations are comparable. In the case of Ukraine which is probably most similar to Iran from an economic standpoint, had many refugees who were temporarily fleeing Russian aggression but planned to return to Ukraine. Iran, especially if/when it’s out from under sanctions has a more robust economy and geopolitical forces going for it, versus Libya or Syria, in my view.
hkpack 21 hours ago [-]
It won’t matter what the policies are as the majority of refugees will try to get to the EU illegally.
Economy will matter only if there will be no fallout in Iran which is not guaranteed.
ericmay 20 hours ago [-]
It will matter because they can have policies like “stricter border control” to stop legal or illegal immigration. It’s like Pakistan and how they closed their border to refugees from Iran.
> Economy will matter only if there will be no fallout in Iran which is not guaranteed.
Sure it depends on what all happens, but my point was it is different than Syria or Libya in many aspects.
Ray20 10 hours ago [-]
>It won’t matter what the policies are as the majority of refugees will try to get to the EU illegally.
But policies directly influence people's motivation to become illegal migrants in a particular country.
abletonlive 21 hours ago [-]
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nemothekid 21 hours ago [-]
>but there's actually nothing separating china
Yeah man, nothing except 2000+ miles of the largest mountain ranges in the fucking world. Are you serious man?
hkpack 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah, thanks for the war in Iraq and for the raise of ISIS, and for the war in Syria and now destabilizing Iran.
“self inflicted”
sealeck 20 hours ago [-]
I know that this kind of comment makes sense from the American perspective (based on past US actions in South America) but the EU is not actually responsible for massively destabilising the Middle East.
riLTSfxA9FSX 19 hours ago [-]
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Avshalom 21 hours ago [-]
"Point / Counterpoint:
This War Will Destabilize the Entire Mideast and Set Off a Shockwave of Anti-Americanism
VS.
No It Won’t“
riku_iki 20 hours ago [-]
Iran and allies already did what they could during Gaza escalation. Their projection power is rather limited.
A nuclear armed Iran is very definitely a threat. Much of the middle east considers Iran to be an enemy, and if Iran gets nukes, the rest of the middle east will feel compelled to follow.
The west has been working to counter Iran's ongoing nuclear weapons program for decades.
dudefeliciano 15 hours ago [-]
Since 1945 the United States of America never attacks countries that are actual threats, we should have learned this by now.
fldskfjdslkfj 8 hours ago [-]
> "Nobody in their right mind wants iran to have nuclear weapons"
Does not sound like Chomsky is saying "no, iran isn't a threat" to me.
raincole 21 hours ago [-]
They'll do some symbolic attacks against the US bases in ME.
But yeah, I do think history will remember this as one of the few good things Trump does.
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infamouscow 21 hours ago [-]
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bn-l 21 hours ago [-]
You might want to wipe off the foam that’s starting around your own mouth.
infamouscow 21 hours ago [-]
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lunar-whitey 20 hours ago [-]
“De-Nazification” required every Allied power to commit to years of occupation and decades more of economic support to prevent backsliding. No such agreement is possible today.
Contemporary experience shows the probable outcome of regime change policy is a failed state that remains a hazard to its neighbors.
infamouscow 19 hours ago [-]
De-Nazification required the Allies mass-murdering about a million Germans after the war was over. There's a reason why there's a fudge factor of 1M in the POW camps in the years after the war.
During the Civil War, Abolitionists mass-murdered slave owners by way of dueling them. The story of Cassius Marcellus Clay is littered with stories of brutally killing slave owners and we champion Abolitionists as righteous.
lunar-whitey 17 hours ago [-]
De-Nazification as policy essentially evaporated in the west in the earliest years of the Adenaur government. Killing and displacement of Germans in the east certainly occurred, but the example of the west shows this was not essential.
Killing men in personal duels is not comparable or relevant.
infamouscow 51 minutes ago [-]
My point being that it makes no sense for a society that just underwent Nazi occupation to let it continue.
After such a violent effort, it is a foregone conclusion that the remaining cancer is mercilessly destroyed. If you don't, then all of the lives sacrificed for the cause are meaningless.
What the West has a problem with is reconciling the inescapable reality that true believers absolutely must be killed (for good reason).
There is nothing within the Western view that affords anything short of death for these people. This makes people very uncomfortable, but it's necessary if Western civilization is to continue.
siltcakes 21 hours ago [-]
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umeshunni 20 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, the Jihadi fantasy that you learned at the madrassa
Exactly what I think will happen. I think it's already inevitable.
The IDF has total air superiority. The regime has very little capabilities left at all.
coffeefirst 20 hours ago [-]
Okay. But then what?
In Lebanon the state is attempting to reassert itself. In Syria the rebels took control. But with no foreign boots on the ground, and no organized opposition ready to step in, what exactly is supposed to happen after the regime folds?
siltcakes 21 hours ago [-]
Iran has been bombing Israeli targets at will, including Tel Aviv. Israel doesn't even have control over their own airspace.
carabiner 21 hours ago [-]
Russia will bump up arms shipments to Iran. We'll have no choice but to strike interior of Russia. Russia will not hit mainland US, but will attack US bases across Western Europe. This will be WW3.
int_19h 21 hours ago [-]
Russia needs everything it can manufacture for itself to use in Ukraine, and they have already gotten everything useful there was to get from Iran, so the latter is on their own.
biglyburrito 18 hours ago [-]
This absolutely will not happen. Iran has been shipping missiles & drones TO Russia, because Russia can't domestically produce enough of either to sustain their war against Ukraine.
lostlogin 15 hours ago [-]
> We'll have no choice but to strike interior of Russia.
You really believe Trump would take meaningful action against Russia? He can even make a forceful statement, let alone act.
827a 20 hours ago [-]
Its actually incredible how this exact thing could have been done by any other President and half the people losing their minds about WW3 in these comments wouldn't have even logged on to comment.
isuckatcoding 20 hours ago [-]
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2OEH8eoCRo0 20 hours ago [-]
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disambiguation 15 hours ago [-]
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seydor 15 hours ago [-]
There is a lot of equating "The West" with israel in this. A LOT of the west is not behind what israel is doing , not even americans are. Iran is a very minor threat to europe and US, and very minor threat in general.
There is nothing ideological about this war, nobody seriously believes that. It's 100% power play
tgv 11 hours ago [-]
The same goes for Iran, of course: I'd wager the majority of them would rather see the current regime go.
karmakurtisaani 14 hours ago [-]
This is just putting to action Israel's long term plan of getting US in war with Iran.
karmakurtisaani 15 hours ago [-]
Funny how diplomacy is not an option for you.
Doggler 19 hours ago [-]
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jewzintheoven 19 hours ago [-]
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beefnugs 21 hours ago [-]
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DobarDabar 12 hours ago [-]
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jewzintheoven 19 hours ago [-]
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throwawaybob420 7 hours ago [-]
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postsantum 7 hours ago [-]
Very common among software engineers unfortunately. Successfully jumping between js frameworks and being paid well for it make people think they can do it with anything after reading manuals (CNN op-eds)
throwawaybob420 7 hours ago [-]
“You see, Iran is a bad country full of MUSLIMS, who seemingly hate us because of our freedoms as per Fareed Zakaria. I believe as part of a logical deduction, this is the only reason. Not because our country has overthrown their democracy in the 50s, or caused widespread death and destruction throughout the entire region, or…”
testrun 22 hours ago [-]
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netsharc 22 hours ago [-]
I swear, his signoff sentences are designed to give intelligent people brain aneurysms...
20 hours ago [-]
mupuff1234 22 hours ago [-]
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madsmith 22 hours ago [-]
Something like 400 people just died because of a claim about nuclear weapons which is not backed up by evidence. Claims that have been echoed for decades…
Purportedly 400 people just died… Was it because a sovereign country wants to have Nuclear power? Maybe? Maybe not? Was it because Israel already has Nukes? Who knows… But it’s not a simple end of story situation unless lives have no value.
paxys 21 hours ago [-]
500K-1M Iraqis died because of a proven false claim about nuclear weapons. Not a single perpetrator faced justice.
bn-l 21 hours ago [-]
“The world is a safer place…”
When you hear these words you’re being sold an agenda.
shepherdjerred 22 hours ago [-]
Is there any use for highly enriched uranium other than weapons?
alessivs 21 hours ago [-]
Radiopharmacy / Nuclear pharmacy. While peaceful, it's a delicate science and some kind of inspections are usually enforced. Thankfully, Iran did allow IAEA inspectors and is a signatory of the NPT (non-proliferation treaty). One could wish that was the reality of the nuclear operations of certain other states which are not scrutinized.
I read that Iran was enriching weapons-grade uranium for peaceful purposes.
flyinglizard 22 hours ago [-]
It is all very, even exceedingly simple. Iran’s nuclear program had no civilian explanation or justification. There’s nothing to be done with 60% enriched material other than go for nuclear weapons within a very short timeframe.
arandomusername 22 hours ago [-]
True - agreed. Now we need to get rid of Israel's nuclear weapons.
YZF 22 hours ago [-]
Let's get rid of all nuclear weapons. Why are we picking on Israel here? Unlike the US Israel has never used theirs (or admitted they actually have them). Russia has openly threatened the west with nuclear attack.
arandomusername 22 hours ago [-]
Because Israel is the only nation in that region that has nuclear weapons, and the main reason why Iran wants to have nuclear weapons.
YZF 21 hours ago [-]
It's not really the reason Iran wants to have nuclear weapons though. Iran wants to have nuclear weapons to destroy Israel but more generally to be able to act with impunity.
Israel has nothing against Iran. Before the Islamic revolution there were warm relations between the countries and the people. They are pretty distant geographically and until now have never fought a direct war. Iran has been actively attacking Israel via proxies for decades now and openly claims it wants to destroy it. Israel, at least to date, has shown that it can be trusted to use nuclear weapons as a pure deterrent.
I'd rather live in a world without nuclear weapons but I'm a lot more worried about Russia and Pakistan (e.g.).
By the way, we've seen what value security guarantees have to countries willing to give up nuclear deterrence in Ukraine. Not worth anything.
oa335 21 hours ago [-]
> Iran has been actively attacking Israel via proxies for decades
I think this framing is incorrect. It’s more like “Iran has helped these organizations fight Israel”.
It’s fairly obvious that Hamas and Hezbollah are not proxies - they arose not because of Irani funding but as a reaction to Israeli actions.
throwawaythekey 17 hours ago [-]
Or at least counterbalance it with
"America arms Israel to attack Lebannon and Palestine"
arandomusername 21 hours ago [-]
> Iran wants to have nuclear weapons to destroy Israel
That's often spread by Jewish media, but I see no evidance for this. Iran's supreme leader has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.
> Israel has nothing against Iran
Just like Israel has nothing against Palestinians?
> Israel, at least to date, has shown that it can be trusted to use nuclear weapons as a pure deterrent.
A genocidal state cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.
YZF 21 hours ago [-]
Israel and the Palestinians have a history of violence from Israel's first day as a country. Israel and Iran not really. More recently Israel has been attacked by Palestinians on Oct 7th. Iran was involved in training Hamas: https://ecfr.eu/article/iran-hamas-and-islamic-jihad-a-marri...
"The Hamas-led attacks against Israel on 7 October reflected their own independent calculations. Although they could not have happened without the provision of long-term Iranian support, the attacks likely came as an unwelcome surprise for Tehran, which over the last two months has avoided giving Palestinian groups full-throated support. Whether Hamas and PIJ remain tightly aligned with Iran, however, will depend on the outcome of the war in Gaza and wider dynamics in the Middle East’s fluctuating geopolitics."
Israel has really no history of any hostility towards Iran that predates their proxy wars on Israel. There is absolutely no rational reason or excuse for Iran to be attacking Israel.
> A genocidal state cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.
Exactly.
arandomusername 20 hours ago [-]
Israel has been oppressing Palestinians long before Oct 7th.
Israel was involved in supporting ISIS. That's why ISIS never attacked Israel (except that one time accidentally which they apologized for! How crazy is that?)
> Israel has really no history of any hostility towards Iran that predates their proxy wars on Israel. There is absolutely no rational reason or excuse for Iran to be attacking Israel.
Israel has a history of hostility towards multiple neighbouring states. US has invaded Iraq for Israel. Iran does not want to be next.
> Exactly.
So you agree Israel should not be allowed nuclear weapons
have-a-break 21 hours ago [-]
And Israel is the only country actively fighting it’s neighbor.
oa335 21 hours ago [-]
Neighbors.
Palestine
Syria
Lebanon
Yemen
And Iran
Have all been bombed repeatedly by Israel
YZF 20 hours ago [-]
Israel wasn't really at war with either Lebanon or Yemen or with the Palestinians. It was with Hezbollah and the Houthis and Hamas. All attacked Israel with no provocation before Israel retaliated.
Syria is a different story. Israel did bomb military assets in Syria once the Assad regime fell/fled out of concerns they would fall into the hands of Jihadists. It also took territory to expand the zone it controls in case said Jihadists have intentions of proceeding into Israel. It took advantage of a vacuum in an uncertain security situation. During Assad's reign it did not bomb Syria since the 1973 war (where Syria attacked Israel with no provocation, that was Assad the father fwiw).
oa335 19 hours ago [-]
Sure, by that token the US wasn’t really at war with Germany or Vietnam, it was at war with the Nazis and the Viet Cong. It’s a meaningless distinction to anyone actually affected by the wars.
Additionally, Israel bombed Damascus during Assad’s reign.
Here’s one recent example (bombing an embassy building):
How Israel is supposed to guarantee its existence without nukes? Or is this the idea here?
arandomusername 22 hours ago [-]
Replace Israel with Iran and your question remains the same.
Iran doesn't want to end up like Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya.
kelnos 21 hours ago [-]
Iran seemed like they were doing fine in the existence department, no? I have a lot of disagreement (to put it mildly) with Israel, but I think they'd be fine letting Iran be if they'd stop funding Hezbollah and the Houthis, and quieted down with the "Israel must be destroyed" rhetoric.
(And before the argument changes subject, I think Iran [and others] are justified in being angry with Israel about what they're doing in Gaza.)
arandomusername 21 hours ago [-]
Netanyahu has consistently said he wanted a regime change in Iran, alongside Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan. Iran does not want to end up like the other countries.
clipsy 22 hours ago [-]
How is Iran supposed to "guarantee its existence" without nukes? Or any other country?
TulliusCicero 21 hours ago [-]
I mean, other neighboring countries close to Israel have largely made peace with the country, and they have no nukes. Iran stands out in terms of constantly funding proxies to attack it.
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skulbuny 22 hours ago [-]
That world is the world we have always lived in, unless you have evidence otherwise?
rbanffy 22 hours ago [-]
Not for Iran.
NoMoreWars 22 hours ago [-]
Surely this is just as true for the US and Israel, both of which are less stable countries.
goatlover 22 hours ago [-]
Since when has a conflict in the Middle East been the end of the story?
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
We were heading into that world until Trump fucked the deal.
I guess this is a half truth- that people were still not happy with Iran- who they were still funding and also continuing to develop non-nuclear ballistic missiles?
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
Iran was following their obligations. Trump pulled out unilaterally.
awongh 22 hours ago [-]
But that makes it sound as if Iran was just peacefully chilling out. Which is technically true, but it doesn't actually reflect reality.
skulbuny 11 hours ago [-]
In the Obama deal Iran was allowed to back out if the US broke its terms of the agreement (which happened because of Trump pulling out), so they are acting 100% in accordance still with the original Obama deal. Do you have evidence otherwise?
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
Breaking promises with them means we give up the ability to work with them diplomatically on other goals. "They haven't done everything we'd like them to do" isn't a valid response to someone fulfilling the terms of an agreement you've made with them.
Trump chose to break promises. Now we are seeing the outcome of the resulting breakdown of diplomatic relations.
awongh 22 hours ago [-]
This is the kind of politics that's hard to say which position is the more optimistic or jaded. Or both at once.
sjsdaiuasgdia 21 hours ago [-]
At some point we have to try to make things better, and believe that better (even just a smidge at a time, and possibly with great effort) is possible. Or else we might as well just build the suicide booths from Futurama.
awongh 21 hours ago [-]
It feels deeply cynical and jaded to me to say, well, just let Iran fund armies and encourage ethnic cleansing, as long as they don't do this one specific thing that is more important to Americans. As long as the horrors you create only affect people in the middle east, we can look the other way.
sjsdaiuasgdia 20 hours ago [-]
I'd say the cynical position is the one that says "we can't improve everything all at once, so let's not seek incremental improvements."
nemothekid 21 hours ago [-]
>A world where Iran has no nukes is a safer world, end of story.
Safer for who? Would anyone be lobbing missiles into Tehran if Iran had nukes?
Given how Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine were treated after dismantling their nuclear programs, and given how much grace countries like North Korea are given you'd be an idiot to not have nuclear program, especially when the US accuses you of having on.
Remember, Iran agreed to nuclear deproliferation under Obama, and the next guy tore it up. It's only rational to try and develop nukes and I'd argue its safer if Iran had nukes. Kids wouldn't be dying under rubble in Tehran otherwise.
Nuclear deproliferation is complete joke unless the US and Russia are the first to give up their nukes.
bigyabai 22 hours ago [-]
Why aren't we allowed to extend this scrutiny to Israel?
22 hours ago [-]
conception 22 hours ago [-]
If only there were ways to accomplish this without violence! That would be a really interesting tactic to try some day!
user3939382 22 hours ago [-]
Heard that about the invasion of Iraq. It was bullshit then it’s bullshit now.
20 hours ago [-]
Tika2234 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
derelicta 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
croes 7 hours ago [-]
What exactly did the citizens do?
ivape 5 hours ago [-]
Half of us didn't stop the other retarded half from voting.
amazingamazing 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ethan_smith 22 hours ago [-]
Diplomatic options include returning to the JCPOA framework (the "Iran deal"), multilateral sanctions enforcement, or establishing a new verification regime with IAEA oversight.
arandomusername 22 hours ago [-]
Should US start bombing North Korea too? And Russia too? Can't let them have nukes either.
The initial nuclear agreement that Trump tore up was a good starting point
aaomidi 22 hours ago [-]
Iran was interested in another nuclear agreement too.
US just kept insisting on 0% enrichment.
cempaka 22 hours ago [-]
And then actively facilitated an Israeli sneak attack that murdered Iran's chief nuclear negotiator.
aaomidi 22 hours ago [-]
IAEA, US intelligence said that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon.
It was the only other nuclear armed country of the Middle East crying wolf, which they have since decades before I was born.
oskarkk 22 hours ago [-]
The hardest thing in developing nuclear weapons is getting enough enriched uranium, and Iran was doing that.
ceejayoz 22 hours ago [-]
Quite a few countries take this approach. It’s a sensible one, especially considering how we’ve treated North Korea versus Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya.
Japan has the rockets, the material, and the know how. They’re sometimes described as a screwdriver turn away from a bomb.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
if only there were some agreement we could make with them to get them not to do that...
aaomidi 22 hours ago [-]
I'll take the IAEA and US' own intelligence instead of Netanyahu and Trump.
oskarkk 21 hours ago [-]
IAEA declared that Iran has violated the previous agreements, hides their enriched uranium, and their enrichment is essentially weapons-grade.
> The IAEA report raised a stern warning, saying that Iran is now “the only non-nuclear-weapon state to produce such material” — something the agency said was of “serious concern.”
> The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency — which was seen by The Associated Press — says that as of May 17, Iran has amassed 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60%.
> U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
> "The Board of Governors... finds that Iran's many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the Agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran ... constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with the Agency," the text said.
Anyway, there's a difference between having enough enriched uranium for a bomb, and actually making that uranium into a bomb. But it's not that big of a difference, it's not like enriching uranium to weapons-grade isn't bad.
Kye 22 hours ago [-]
We're allegedly a nation of laws and Trump is always barking about law and order. This is properly done by seeking approval from Congress.
megous 22 hours ago [-]
This is properly done by NOT doing it.
Kye 21 hours ago [-]
This is such a weird comment. Yes, no to bombing Iran. What now? He's done it. Following the proper constitutional process might have prevented it.
22 hours ago [-]
34679 22 hours ago [-]
Yes, absolutely. Iran has never started a war with anyone.
amazingamazing 22 hours ago [-]
[deleted - decided to stop asking questions]
wvbdmp 22 hours ago [-]
Unlike, India, Pakistan or, say, Israel, Iran is a ratifier of the non-proliferation treaty and subject to inspections making sure they don’t. Meanwhile Israel not only has had nukes for decades but also continually refuses any accountability for them.
Indeed, to venture off-topic, Israel has sought nuclear weapons for as long as it has existed, which one might plausibly construe as further evidence that their state was knowingly and willingly established by military force, without much pretense that it could ever persist otherwise.
34679 22 hours ago [-]
Yes.
kevingadd 22 hours ago [-]
They wouldn't be the only country that made nuclear weapons. Or are you proposing that every country that's ever manufactured nukes be bombed into dust? There are a lot of them.
tehjoker 22 hours ago [-]
The there are broad types of penalties prescribed in the NPT, which Iran is a party to.
amazingamazing 22 hours ago [-]
[deleted - decided to stop asking questions]
tehjoker 22 hours ago [-]
USA should not act unilaterally and should abide by the NPT.
cempaka 22 hours ago [-]
Israel did that, are you okay with it?
amazingamazing 22 hours ago [-]
I have no opinion.
Kye 22 hours ago [-]
Your questions in here give the impression you do, and that your opinion is in favor of some kind of intervention. Military interventions have all gone poorly for us, while using diplomacy has worked over and over. Results should matter here and results say bombing is the wrong choice.
amazingamazing 22 hours ago [-]
[deleted - decided to stop asking questions]
Dylan16807 21 hours ago [-]
> I have no opinion.
> I ask mainly to be convinced one way or another.
"Let Iran do whatever?" is not even close to a neutral perspective.
amazingamazing 21 hours ago [-]
[deleted - decided to stop asking questions]
Dylan16807 21 hours ago [-]
> In any case the intent is now clear with this message.
The intent is not clear. You come across as lying about neutrality.
amazingamazing 21 hours ago [-]
Man, no wonder this world is screwed up. Never mind then. I’ll just stop asking questions and let trump do as he likes.
Dylan16807 21 hours ago [-]
> Man, no wonder this world is screwed up. Never mind then. I’ll just stop asking questions and let trump do as he likes.
Or learn how to not write non-leading questions.
Edit: Hey Hey editing all your posts doesn't make you look more sincere, that's just being more antagonistic.
analognoise 22 hours ago [-]
Our own intelligence said they’re not making weapons.
They’ve said they’re not making weapons.
Trump pulled us out of a deal where we lifted sanctions in order to ensure there were no weapons.
This is embarrassing and outright illegal.
FridayoLeary 22 hours ago [-]
Their meddling directly contributed to the current disastrous war in Gaza and lebanon. They also helped prop up the Assad regime in Syria. All so they could threaten a country 700 miles away.
I expect you to deny or water down most of my claims, so to spare a long flamewar, just assume i've given all the generic standard responses everyone here has seen 100 times. I agree with most of them.
But what business is it of Iran whether or not israel exists? They don't seem
to care
about palestinians too much otherwise they wouldn't be supporting hamas and the war they started.
It's a genocidal regime, despised by most of her citizens. They fund proxy wars across the middle east based on religious extremism. They deserve everything they are getting and with all due respect only an idiot would support them.
34679 22 hours ago [-]
It sure sounds like you're talking about Israel.
albiinics 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
20 hours ago [-]
FilosofumRex 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
EvgeniyZh 16 hours ago [-]
3. You can use highly enriched uranium (HEU) for things other than weapons, but the weapons are the only things that require HEU. Medical isotopes and propulsion can be done with LEU. For instance, Argentina produces medical Mo99 from LEU [1]. US Navy wants to switch to LEU for submarines [2]. One of the reasons for these developments is exactly proliferation risk management.
Australia's future nuclear submarines are planned to use HEU not LEU.
HEU has clear advantages over LEU for submarines – LEU submarines need to be refuelled once every decade (give or take a few years), weapons grade HEU reactors are never refuelled – the initial fuelling is enough to last 30-40 years, and by the time refuelling is becoming needed, the submarine is retired/scrapped.
This was also part of Australia's justification for backstabbing France over AUKUS. Australia was paying France for diesel-electric submarines, but if it wanted nuclear, France can provide that too – but French nuclear submarines are LEU not HEU – the US and the UK are the only nations which have weapons grade HEU subs. [0] Of course, an arguably much bigger factor was Anglosphere strategic alliances versus greater cultural/political distance from France, but it is diplomatically helpful to be able to appeal to a justification which is more objectively technical in nature.
In an attempt to manage non-proliferation concerns, I understand the AUKUS plan is that when they start constructing nuclear submarines in Australia, they'll build and fuel the reactor in the UK (or possibly the US, but the UK is apparently more likely), ship it fuelled to Australia for installation in the submarine, and then at the end of the submarine's life, the reactor will be removed from it in Australia and then shipped back to the UK for defeuelling and disassembly. But, I guess it is an open question to what extent such an exercise is required by the letter of the non-proliferation treaty, versus whether it will be done that way simply to close down a potential line of diplomatic and political criticism.
[0] Russian and Indian sub fuel is HEU by IAEA definitions, but significantly less enriched than the US/UK subs, which use weapons grade uranium as fuel. Some Soviet era subs did use weapons grade HEU
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
> 3. You can use highly enriched uranium (HEU) for things other than weapons, but the weapons are the only things that require HEU.
OP seems to expect everyone to believe that any regime invests years and small fortunes in research sites built in networks of bomb-proof bunkers buried inside mountains, right next to their network of ballistic missiles, to research medical applications.
KevinCarbonara 16 hours ago [-]
You're suggesting that honest countries with no intention of building nuclear weapons would have no reason to ever try and hide or protect their nuclear sites. This is probably the single worst point in history to make that argument.
VoidWhisperer 16 hours ago [-]
Regarding #3, I haven't kept up with this specific issue lately, but wasn't the issue with their use and creation of HEU, atleast for a while, that they wouldn't allow UN nuclear energy inspectors to monitor what was being created at the reactors? There are AP articles from 2023[1] saying that Iran had barred 1/3 of the most experienced inspectors the UN had there from monitoring it, and a news article from the UN itself from this year[2] says that Iran has been actively impeding their ability to monitor its nuclear program.
Presumably if you allow monitors for non-weapons uses, the accounting of where the material goes is relatively straightforward. Therefore monitoring could not be allowed, ipso facto, they are doing it for weapons.
rocqua 15 hours ago [-]
An other compatible explanation is that they wanted ambiguity about their weapon production.
Besides, wasn't this whole thing triggered by a UN report showing they had made a lot more 50% enriched stuff than expected? I.e. the monitoring "worked"
hnaccount_rng 14 hours ago [-]
But ambiguity with respect to weapons production has to be taken as a confirmation of an intent to develop weapons of the opposite side. Which makes this equivalent to just having a nuke program. It doesn't even give you a bargaining chip because there is nothing you can do as a step back (since you didn't do anything in the first place)
rocqua 1 hours ago [-]
The step back is allowing inspections.
tomtom1337 16 hours ago [-]
I suggest you wrap the misconceptions in quotation marks to make it clearer what is the misconception and what is not. Took me two passes to realize what was what.
dehrmann 15 hours ago [-]
> 3. Highly enriched U-235 is only for weapons - Modern medical, propulsion and research reactors use HEU
If you genuinely have no interest in uranium for weapons, it makes more sense to buy it from a country known to supply it at purities and quantities for peaceful purposes than to build you own centrifuges under mountains. Iran is/was either using uranium enrichment for weapons development or a political bargaining chip.
9dev 16 hours ago [-]
> Modern medical, propulsion and research reactors use HEU
This blanket statement is so inaccurate it is useless. HEU is a range, medical or research applications usually use 20–30% enriched Uranium, not the >60% Iran is (has been?) currently working on.
ebb_earl_co 16 hours ago [-]
What is a fifth column? For that matter, what are the preceding four columns?
fifilura 16 hours ago [-]
A fifth column is a group of embedded traitors.
I am not sure the word is suitably used here.
Franco (loosely). "We'll be marching towards Madrid in four columns. The fifth column is already in the city".
ebb_earl_co 7 hours ago [-]
As in Francisco Franco? Thank you for the definition and some bonus etymology!
fifilura 2 hours ago [-]
Yep same guy, during spanish civil war in the 1930s
A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation.
DonHopkins 15 hours ago [-]
So like the Trump administration, systematically undermining American democracy in favor of Putin, and sending violent crowds of drooling mouth breathing batshit crazy white supremacist insurrectionists breaking and entering into sacred government buildings, beating the living daylights out of police and stealing their equipment as they lay crying in pain on the ground, driving them to commit suicide, smearing shit on the walls and floors of Congress, proudly parading Racist Confederate Loser Battle Flags around the Capitol, stealing and vandalizing government property, shouting out their support for Trump while correctly claiming and proudly posting to social media that they are acting on his behalf and at his command, and trying to capture and murder American politicians including the Vice President himself.
16 hours ago [-]
scoofy 15 hours ago [-]
I like the implication that Jews control American media. Classic move. Would enjoy again.
13 hours ago [-]
13 hours ago [-]
NoImmatureAdHom 16 hours ago [-]
To me, the only point that matters is #3 and to the best of my knowledge it isn't true any longer.
Iran has produced a large amount of >60% U-235 (enriched), probably hundreds of kilograms, way more than would be required for any peaceful purpose. I don't think any modern medical uses actually require enriched uranium any more. And anyway, how much medical imaging or radiation treatment could you possibly be doing? And they could be developing propulsion systems, that wouldn't be a peaceful purpose (it would be a military ship).
Put all this together and it seems abundantly clear that the sole purpose of Iran's HEU program is the production of nuclear weapons. HEU isn't required in any significant amount for peaceful purposes.
thehappypm 11 hours ago [-]
Also, Iran is a major major oil producer. They don’t really need nuclear power, do they?
karmakurtisaani 16 hours ago [-]
> Put all this together and it seems abundantly clear that the sole purpose of Iran's HEU program is the production of nuclear weapons.
Not true. One simple reason could be just to keep the appearance of the program ongoing in order to gain leverage in negotiations. Remember that Trump pulled US out of the negotiations on his first term, this could easily just be Iran's response to it.
fastball 16 hours ago [-]
Ok, but if you bluff in poker and someone else calls it (in this case – US bombing enrichment facilities), you can't really be mad about it, can you?
15 hours ago [-]
karmakurtisaani 15 hours ago [-]
So declaration of war is now an acceptable negotiation tactic?
E: and is it acceptable when used against Israel/US?
fastball 15 hours ago [-]
No, these bombings are not a negotiation tactic, they are a response to a dangerous action (violating non-proliferation treaties). The regime hoping that this action might be useful as a negotiation tactic does not somehow strip the action of its consequences.
If I point a gun at my wife during a divorce proceeding and a cop shoots me, that's on me, no? Even if I never meant to pull the trigger and the gun wasn't even loaded.
karmakurtisaani 15 hours ago [-]
And when the best available intelligence says Iran was nowhere near close of obtaining a nuke?
The real reason is this: Israel is in a unique position where they have removed all threats at their borders so they can finally attack their biggest enemy. So they do that, and while doing so pull the US with them. We are at the brink of a massive war that will have millions of casualties, with even more millions fleeing to Europe, destabilizing the world even further.
You probably bought the reasoning about Saddam's WMDs as well.
fastball 15 hours ago [-]
Complete non-sequitur from where the conversation was one comment ago.
This thread started with you saying "maybe they are doing it as a negotiation tactic". And yet simultaneously you think it is everyone else's fault if such a tactic is taken seriously?
You can't have it both ways.
karmakurtisaani 15 hours ago [-]
> And yet simultaneously you think it is everyone else's fault if such a tactic is taken seriously?
I don't know how you could read my comment and conclude that.
Sure, we can call it high stakes negotiation tactic if that's what you prefer, but let's not kid ourselves why the attacks started in reality.
dismalaf 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
epolanski 16 hours ago [-]
The two things aren't mutually exclusive.
wpm 16 hours ago [-]
Excellent refutation!
Come on you gotta at least try
dismalaf 16 hours ago [-]
None of the points matter when Iran literally states their goal is nuclear weapons and using them on Israel, over and over again. Straight from the horse's mouth.
Yet it's framed as "misconceptions perpetuated by Israel and its 5th column in US media"
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
garbagewoman 16 hours ago [-]
The torrent of downvotes might be related to the lack of substance in your comment
motorest 16 hours ago [-]
My point is to underline the fact that the comment had no purpose other than to shoehorn wild claims of "Israel and its 5th column". Do you dispute this fact?
Your question necessitates the idea that the US is some sort of worldwide nanny state, where anything that happens without an action, the US “let” happen. It’s an innocent question but the assumptions are far more drastic. Reflect on some other alternatives besides “the US is in charge of everything”, especially looking at our track record in the Middle East.
tptacek 22 hours ago [-]
In matters of nuclear proliferation, that's kind of close to the truth, whether we like it or not.
amanaplanacanal 21 hours ago [-]
The US allowed Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea to get nuclear weapons, but Iran is a step too far? Pull the other one.
lossolo 21 hours ago [-]
I already heard that when the USA illegally attacked and invaded Iraq. Both of these situations, from the point of view of international law, are no different from Russia's illegal bombing of Ukraine.
kelnos 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, but as much as I don't trust Trump or his administration, it's not clear whether Iran has or doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, and if they do, how close they are to a serviceable weapon.
Bush Jr and his buddies are IMO unindicted war criminals. It remains to be seen if this current act puts Trump in the same shoes. I hope Iran really did have a nuclear weapons program and that this attack is in some way justified. But I won't believe or disbelieve it until we know more, corroborated by trustworthy sources outside the US.
twodave 22 hours ago [-]
The premise here is correct only as far as it is true that anyone besides the US possesses the capacity to act. Beyond that point, it is no longer charitable to frame it that way.
amazingamazing 22 hours ago [-]
Again, just curious - so you believe countries shouldn’t intervene if others decide they want nuclear tech and or weapons?
I see both arguments, but I’m curious what others think
sodality2 22 hours ago [-]
By "others", you presumably mean credible threats from enemy states (since we allow Israel to secretly harbor nuclear weaponry with no problem). But no, I don't think that. I think it's nuanced, and I think that it's wrong to frame it with language like "let", instead of saying it like it is: starting a war to intervene. War in the Middle East is historically a bad idea, and there better be a good reason to justify the senseless death. I think the seriousness of that decision should not be minimized by statements like "well we couldn't just let them do anything". There is a serious chance of this escalating into something far worse.
nradov 22 hours ago [-]
Unlike Iran, Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The official concern has always been that Iran signed the NPT, but then at various times seems to have possibly violated the terms. I'm not necessarily in favor of this recent attack, just pointing out that legally Israel and Iran are in completely different situations.
sodality2 21 hours ago [-]
True. I doubt that the US would have this strong of a reaction to a different non-compliant country we were allied with, though. (Can you imagine the US bunker-bombing Germany, SK, AUS, etc?)
tdeck 21 hours ago [-]
Israel signed the Rome statue and has repeatedly violated specific orders from the ICJ to prevent genocide, so let's not pretend that this is somehow about a concern for international law.
nradov 21 hours ago [-]
The USA doesn't recognize the ICJ so your comment is irrelevant to the article under discussion.
tdeck 18 hours ago [-]
Another great point! The US doesn't recognize the ICJ anymore after it was caught illegally planting mines in Nicaraguan harbors and lost in the ICJ. A verdict the US still has not complied with. Just more evidence that upholding international law isn't a priority for the US.
whoknowsidont 21 hours ago [-]
Curious what the alternative is here? Let the U.S. do whatever? Genuinely curious.
UltraSane 21 hours ago [-]
If you trust Iran with nuclear weapons you are not wise.
nemothekid 21 hours ago [-]
If you are a leader of any nation, you are an idiot to not have a nuclear program. It's carteblanche for any nuclear power to come in and fuck your shit up.
Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine has nukes.
The US would not have dismantled Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran if they had nukes.
You look at a country like North Korea and they get the red carpet despite have an incredibly oppressive regime and spending millions on cyber attacks and corporate espionaige. You know why? Because they have nukes.
It's not a question of "trusting" Iran. Iran with nukes is more geopolitically stable situation than Iran without nukes. As it stands today, Iran without nukes, means that Lockheed Martin gets to fleece another 10 trillion dollars from the American public for the next decade.
UltraSane 6 hours ago [-]
"Iran with nukes is more geopolitically stable situation than Iran without nukes."
This is one of the most wrong things anyone has ever said. If Iran successfully develops a nuclear weapon, it would almost certainly compel its regional rivals, namely Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, to pursue their own nuclear weapons to maintain a balance of power. A Middle East with multiple nuclear states is a nightmare scenario, dramatically increasing the chances of miscalculation or nuclear use.
Iran with nukes would almost certainly act far more aggressively just like Russia has with Ukraine.
baobun 19 hours ago [-]
It's perfectly consistent to be against both Iran nuclear development and the US attack yesterday. One does not imply the other.
sahila 21 hours ago [-]
Not wise in what way? You say that likely as an American without caring at all about the people in Iran. The US is the only nation is have used a nuclear weapon and frankly is far more capable of destruction than Iran is even with nukes.
UltraSane 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
whoknowsidont 21 hours ago [-]
Do you have an actual counter-point or are you just immediately going to loop into thought-terminating cliches?
UltraSane 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ericmay 21 hours ago [-]
On the other hand, the US only used atomic weapons to end a devastating war inflicted upon it by a ferocious and fanatical adversary, and in doing so saved both American and Japanese lives from continued fighting.
Though your point about the US being more capable of destruction than Iran is obviously true. China also is more capable of destruction than Iran, as are Israel, Russia (as we see today with their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine), and many others.
kelnos 21 hours ago [-]
I've read opinions/theories that suggest the US didn't really need to bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and that Japan would have surrendered soon enough, due to fears of a Soviet invasion, without that invasion needing to actually happen. The bomb drops were so the US could claim the achievement of getting Japan to surrender, which would give it prestige and leverage over the Soviets, and more of a say in what happened to Japan and the Pacific theatre after the war. (Which, if true, worked exactly as planned.)
Beyond that, there are moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons. I know people who think it would have been more moral to force a Japanese surrender via many Japanese and American soldiers to die during an invasion of Japan, than for the US to kill civilians with nuclear weapons. I'm not sure I agree with that line of thinking, but I can't dismiss it either.
ericmay 21 hours ago [-]
I don’t think there’s a particular moral concern and I’m not sure where that meme has arisen from. An atomic bomb is just a bigger bomb than other bombs. There’s nothing special about it besides it being exceptionally large in its destructive capability.
If you were firebombed or killed in a human meat wave in Stalingrad you are just as dead as someone killed with big bomb.
I think the moral argument about killing more and more Americans or Japanese during an invasion is a fun theoretical discussion, but in a war your people matter and the enemy’s don’t in cases like this where you have two clear nation states engaged in total war. Certainly the circumstances of the wars matter, but in the case of World War II I think it’s rather clear cut, and opinions to the contrary are generally revisionist history meant to continue to make America look like a bad guy in order to cause moral confusion and social division.
yencabulator 20 hours ago [-]
The difference is in targeting cities. Civilian targets. Let me remind you of the paragraph above:
> Beyond that, there are moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons. I know people who think it would have been more moral to force a Japanese surrender via many Japanese and American soldiers to die during an invasion of Japan, than for the US to kill civilians with nuclear weapons. [...]
ericmay 20 hours ago [-]
A civilian is just a soldier who hasn’t put on a uniform in this scenario, and a soldier is just a civilian who has put on a uniform. You’re making a meaningless distinction in this context. There isn’t some sort of magic status that changes here - the same Japanese civilians were working at shipyards and ordinance factories to build weapons to kill American soldiers - you think we shouldn’t bomb those factories because we would kill Japanese civilians building weapons to kill American soldiers and that’s ok because the Americans were wearing a costume and we call them “military personnel”?
What does this have to do with Japanese war crimes and violations of the conventions you linked?
yencabulator 19 hours ago [-]
If I follow your logic, you believe that other countries should have nuked a couple of major US cities. I think that's.. not a great way to go.
ericmay 19 hours ago [-]
That’s a strawman
whoknowsidont 15 hours ago [-]
Please define a strawman, in your own words. Because I don't think anyone would remotely qualify what OP said as a strawman.
20 hours ago [-]
rstupek 17 hours ago [-]
We killed almost as many civilians when we firebombed Tokyo. Is the use of the atomic bomb somehow different in your mind?
yencabulator 17 hours ago [-]
I can think of three things off the top of my head, the scale enabled by them, the timeline of the deaths, and the residual effects.
whoknowsidont 20 hours ago [-]
>I've read opinions/theories that suggest
It's not a suggestion. It's a well-supported historical fact.
davejagoda 17 hours ago [-]
Dwight Eisenhower had a different view (from The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953-1956: A Personal Account (New York: Doubleday, 1963), pp. 312-313):
The incident took place in 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.” The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions.
ericmay 11 hours ago [-]
There are two problems with this.
The first problem is that you are using this quote as an appeal to authority. Eisenhower might have written that he thought it wasn’t needed to end the war, but he was just one voice amongst many.
The second problem is you’re not reading carefully with historical context.
> It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.”
Japan and its leadership consisted of various factions, ranging from hardliners who wanted to arm every single Japanese citizen and fight to the last child, to those who wanted to surrender and negotiate a peace settlement.
Prior to the usage of the atomic weapons to quickly end the war, Japan planned to continue fighting, and the Japanese Army in particular was preparing the homeland to fight to the death.
The hardliners who brought Japan into war still had enough sway at this juncture to continue the war and planned to do so.
When Eisenhower says “it was my belief”, he’s partially right, there in fact were Japanese military and political officials who were trying to end the war in a way that saves face, and protects the honor of the Emperor. But the problem with his belief as stated is that although there were in fact those folks seeking to end the war, they didn’t have control and could not stop the war on their own.
Prior to the usage of the atomic weapons, the United States knew the war was going to be won, but what it didn’t know was whether Japan really was going to fight to the last child or sue for peace. Given the American experience at Okinawa many believed the fighting would continue, and that it would be bloody and many lives would be lost.
Instead of dealing with all of that uncertainty, they used the bomb. Japan still hadn’t surrendered with some Imperial Army leadership believing the Americans couldn’t posses more than 1 or 2 and so Japan could keep fighting. The US used it again. Hirohito had enough. Japan surrendered. Etc.
The politics of the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy, domestic officials, and the Emperor are quite complicated. There were disagreements and misgivings before war with the United States even took place, and as the war continued there were disagreements even when it seems obvious in retrospect that the United States “didn’t need” to use the atomic weapons.
But presenting a single quote from a single man, albeit an important one, as though his disagreement is a coup de grace on a discussion about the usage of atomic weapons to end the war is lazy at the very least, if not downright rude.
Instead of dropping a random quote from Eisenhower and being lazy, you should pull up your keyboard and write your original thoughts on the matter, cite your sources where you see fit (I’m not asking for those) and present a coherent argument.
As easily as you can produce a quote, so too can that quote be dismissed as just some guy’s opinion. Clearly the President thought differently and used the bombs.
I personally am of the opinion that if using the bombs saved the lives of a few thousand (at least) American soldiers it was worth it. Japan started the war. I’m an American - American lives matter more to me than do the lives of others in the context of World War II, including civilians.
davejagoda 4 hours ago [-]
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm not choosing random quotes. I chose Eisenhower since I was surprised to learn his opinion on the subject, and actually read the quote out of a paper copy of his autobiography. So while I can't be 100% sure that he wrote that, it seems extremely likely that he did.
Until a few years ago, I believed what I had learned in school - that the bombs were necessary to end the war more quickly, and that they actually saved both American and Japanese lives by hastening the surrender. If invading the home islands was the only way, and if there was a fight to the last person, then that would be a reasonable conclusion.
A few counterarguments I heard over time were not easy to dismiss:
1. Why did the surrender come on August 15th? Since no more bombs arrived after August 9th, what changed? In particular, if the US had more nuclear weapons to use, where was the August 12th bomb, since there was apparently a 3 day cycle. From the perspective of the Japanese military leadership, one explanation would be there were no more ready, so the urgency to surrender before further bombs would be lessened.
2. Why did Operation Meetinghouse (March 10th, 1945) which caused a similar amount of destruction with only conventional weapons not precipitate a surrender?
3. How important were the other reasons to use the weapons, such as:
a. Testing out their effectiveness against a real enemy target. Conducting such a test initially seemed hard to believe, but in context of the firebombing of cities in Japan (e.g. Tokyo) and Germany (e.g. Dresden) may have made this test plausible to Allied military leaders. The fact that two different types of bomb were used bolsters the argument that this was in part a test.
b. Deterring the Soviet armies from continuing to take territory because they had the conventional means to doing so. In other words, this was not just to end WW2, but to set the stage for the post-war environment that was coming soon.
c. Making sure that the huge expense of developing the weapons wasn't "wasted" by not using them against an enemy.
I've read Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" (which I just re-read now) since it's the most concise yet persuasive argument I've encountered in favor of using atomic weapons to save lives. If I knew of a similar writing making the opposite case, I would share it here. If you know of such a thing, please let me know.
My current understanding of the situation is that the accumulation of damage inflicted against Japan helped cause the leadership to surrender. The proximate tipping point was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. That meant the end of their peace treaty with the Soviets, the foreclosing of the possibility of the Soviets facilitating peace negotiations with the Allies, and increased the likelihood of an invasion of the home islands by the Red Army before an American invasion could happen. This is the event that finally brought the Japanese government to their senses.
ericmay 4 hours ago [-]
> So while I can't be 100% sure that he wrote that, it seems extremely likely that he did.
I didn't meant to imply I was questioning that he wrote what was quoted and I apologize if I did so. It was just that he was but one person in an excruciatingly complicated political dynamic and neither the United States nor Japan had perfect information. I'm not sure we knew that Japan would surrender, and even so I think we forget the utter insanity of World War II and how that drove nation states to do, what seem like in hindsight, to be crazy things or at least take suboptimal actions. With respect to some of your questions regarding various dates, my understanding is that you can chalk some of that up to the fog of war, lack of instantaneous communication, and more. It takes time to send a message to Washington from the Pacific, etc.
> In other words, this was not just to end WW2, but to set the stage for the post-war environment that was coming soon.
I have little doubt that this was a factor (as were other items mentioned), though I don't think it was the primary reason of course - i.e. testing.
Given how absolutely abhorrent the Soviet Union was to become and even today the situation we find ourselves in with a nuclear armed Russia, Churchill and Patton (among others) made sincere, if not perhaps flawed arguments for taking the war immediately to the Soviets but we simply did not have enough nuclear weapons I think at the time.
We didn't know for sure that Communism would fail, although it seems so obvious in hindsight given that it's a failed/flawed ideology. What was it that Teddy Roosevelt said? I don't recall the exact quote but something about the man in the arena. I think that's applicable here. Well, it's applicable to almost all of the wartime decisions that were made. We weren't there. It wasn't my son or daughter dying on some random island in the Pacific. It wasn't me taking a bullet to the chest, or losing an eye, or a leg. How dare I, or anyone else alive today judge the actions of those enduring such horror? An end to the war, by any means possible, seems appropriate to me, however, even if that means as some say unnecessarily killing "innocent" civilians to save American lives. If there were other benefits to using the atomic weapons, so be it.
We're so quick to judge the actions of our leadership at the time, but we shouldn't forget that in the end we came not to conquer but to liberate. And we helped to liberate both Europe and Japan, and of course the Philippines, China, and others from the yolk of despotism. I reject any and all cynical takes to the contrary as useless and corrupt.
> My current understanding...
I largely agree, but want to reiterate that the leadership of Japan wasn't sitting around some conference table saying "oh but please America let us just surrender!". To the very moment of surrender there were hardliners who stood against it. Only when the emperor, with what I have come to understand to be quite a bit of difficulty, issued an end to the war did it finally end. My memory may be incorrect but even after that the Imperial Army, or at least factions of it, wanted to continue to fight. As you mention and I understand currently, there are some historians who have argued that the Japanese did not want to surrender or did not have the political will to do so when the atomic bombs were dropped (assuming the Americans did not have more) but the Soviet invasion was the tipping point. Which I think goes to further show that dropping the bombs on the Japanese wasn't some wonton act of aggression but the United States continuing to take the fight to a determined and dangerous enemy.
I think also with respect to the Soviets, they partially entered the war with Japan for territorial gain and to make sure they had a seat at the table for the negotiation in the Pacific.
> Thank you for your thoughtful reply
Thanks to you as well. I hope I didn't come across too poorly, it's hard to convey over text. I do find it irritating when someone is like "here's a link, here's a quote, go watch this video or read this book" and instead of making a compelling argument for themselves based on what they have learned they want you to spend all of your time arguing with their quote, so you spend a lot of time picking a part a video or an article or something and they don't contribute much to the discussion themselves.
whoknowsidont 2 hours ago [-]
You aren't providing any evidence for any of your statements, what's the point other than propaganda?
whoknowsidont 5 hours ago [-]
>I personally am of the opinion that if using the bombs saved the lives of a few thousand (at least) American soldiers it was worth it.
You are an evil and stupid person.
>Japan planned to continue fighting, and the Japanese Army in particular was preparing the homeland to fight to the death.
No they didn't. They didn't want an unconditional surrender, they had sued for peace multiple times and it was ignored.
So instead of us negotiating with Japanese we completely destroyed two civilian cities to put them in their place.
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."
- Adm. William Leahy, President Harry Truman’s chief military adviser
"First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."
- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
"The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."
- Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945
"The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment ... It was a mistake to ever drop it ... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. "
- Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr., 1946
"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, 1950
So we have the supreme allied commander, commander and chief of the pacific fleet, and the chief military advisor to Truman all on record saying the bomb was not necessary nor really saved American lives.
Then we have people like you on the internet saying otherwise, with no proof.
Really quite the contrast.
whoknowsidont 21 hours ago [-]
> the US only used atomic weapons to end a devastating war inflicted upon it by a ferocious and fanatical adversary
This isn't true at all. You don't need to bomb civilian cities to end a war. The Japanese government, specifically the emperor had already indicated they wanted to negotiate. They were already well aware they couldn't win the war.
There is far, far more evidence that the U.S. just couldn't help itself and wanted to demonstrate our/their new weapon:
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."
- Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
In true U.S. fashion, we had to create a boogeyman to commit some atrocity in order to achieve absolution for the evil we inflicted upon our fellow man.
I’ve read far too many books and spent too much time on this specific topic to have my mind changed by a random YouTube link and a random quote. You are free to choose the narrative that fits your worldview best, I’ve chosen mine based on my own research and learning.
whoknowsidont 20 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
21 hours ago [-]
anonym29 21 hours ago [-]
China and the Soviet Union developing atomic and nuclear capabilities were never a justification to bomb Chinese or Soviet nuclear facilities.
e40 21 hours ago [-]
Did those countries vow to wipe another country off the face of the earth?
anonym29 21 hours ago [-]
Not like when Netanyahu pledged to turn Gaza into a "deserted island"¹, but if that's the kind of rhetoric that justifies US bombing campaigns, then why haven't we bombed Israel's not-so-secret nuclear weapon production facilities, too?
Both can be true. Bibbi is a war criminal. Iran pledged to wipe Israel off the map.
Detrytus 21 hours ago [-]
Soviet Union was an US peer, in terms of power, and China was their ally. Bombing their nuclear facilities could result in war that the US could just as well lose, so that's why they had to show some restraint. But believe me, they would bomb those facilities if they could.
runako 21 hours ago [-]
Probably not your intent, but this is a very clear summation of why it is is likely understood as critical to Iranian security to develop and publicly test a nuclear weapon.
aisenik 19 hours ago [-]
The development, acquisition, and use of nuclear weapons has been against Islamic law in the Islamic Republic of Iran since the mid 90s under a fatwa issued by Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. It is well understood that Iran wants the ability to develop nuclear weapons in the event of an existential threat that justifies the atrocity of their creation but all of the evidence suggests that they are otherwise uninterested in nuclear weapons.
We do not significantly disagree, but I take umbrage at the repetition of the pernicious lie that Iran wants nuclear weapons. They want sovereignty in their land and justice for the Islamic people. This is a reasonable position.
runako 18 hours ago [-]
Understood. I am just making the latter argument that any head of state in a conflicted region must, as a matter of baseline sovereignty, pursue a nuclear deterrent.
It’s clear at this point that such deterrent works, and it’s also not clear what other deterrent might work in its stead. Some of the big imperialist wars of the last half-century likely would have been avoided had the invadee been armed with nukes.
anonym29 21 hours ago [-]
So just to be clear, it's only morally acceptable to wage wars against countries that are unquestionably incapable of defending themselves?
Detrytus 4 hours ago [-]
I did not say anything about "morally acceptable", I was talking about what's possible, and yes, it is much easier to wage wars against countries that are weaker than you.
hackyhacky 22 hours ago [-]
It would be great if we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran to monitor and limit its nuclear development!
Part of the reason it was cancelled was because Iran was still funding a bunch of proxy armies and still developing non-nuclear ballistic missiles?
shihab 22 hours ago [-]
Even if Iran were arming regional proxies, that's an Israel problem, not an america problem. Though AIPAC et el makes sure no american is ever aware of that distinction.
Aeolun 22 hours ago [-]
The US was angry Iran had a civilian rocket program?
ugh123 21 hours ago [-]
So you agree they were not exploring nuclear weapons with that agreement in place?
hackyhacky 22 hours ago [-]
That doesn't seem like a good reason to cancel the only thing stopping them from developing nukes. Of course they fund proxy armies, but that's a reginal problem that can be addressed through conventional means.
Cancelling the Joint Agreement is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. In particular, it was clearly an expression of Trump's animus to Obama.
awongh 22 hours ago [-]
For sure part of it is goading them into looking like the bad guys.
Otoh, ballistic missiles eventually become a western europe/NATO security issue.
Not exactly sure how close Iran would be to that, but that is an element of the situation.
acdha 22 hours ago [-]
Ballistic missiles are a problem but also why it would be better to keep them from having nuclear bombs to put on those missiles.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
Yep, the JCPOA was canceled because 1) Bibi has always wanted to go to war with Iran, and knew very well how to get the US's help to do it, and 2) Trump's ego can be trivially played by just saying it's something Obama got credit for.
sundaeofshock 22 hours ago [-]
The main reason it was canceled is because Donald Trump is a petulant child and he wanted to erase all of Obama’s accomplishments.
andrepd 22 hours ago [-]
Not ripping up a treaty that was being upheld by Iran would be an excellent start.
Probably something other than the one thing that would justify lifting the mid 90's fatwa declaring the creation, possession, and use of nuclear weapons against Islamic law.
How aware is this community of the Supreme Leader's staunch opposition to nuclear weapons?
This is pure imperialism.
tptacek 22 hours ago [-]
They literally printed a bank note celebrating their nuclear program. The SL is not "staunchly opposed to nuclear weapons".
(I think the B-2 strikes were a terribly stupid idea and that Trump got rolled by Netanyahu here, but I'm not going to be negatively polarized into thinking the Iranian SL is a benign figure.)
CamperBob2 21 hours ago [-]
Nuclear program != nuclear weapons program, though.
throwaway2037 21 hours ago [-]
Ok, I will take the bait. Two countries that are frequently noted as having the capability to build nuclear weapons is Japan and Korea. (For the purpose of this post, please assume with good faith that they don't have secret programmes to build nuclear weapons.) Both have world-leading civilian nuclear power programmes and at least part of the nuclear fuel cycle onshore. Side note: One thing that I never see discussed: As both countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Act, I assume that they have regular audits of their facilities by IEAE. (If they were consistently failing with major mishaps, or secret programmes, I am sure that we would read about it.) Both of them have incredibly sophisticated national scientific research programmes that could easily pursue nuclear weapons.
What is the difference between Japan & Korea vs Iran? It is simple: Trust. On the surface, sure, what you say might be true. However, it is hard to trust Iran as they so consistently threaten Israel. What do you think would happen if Iran had the bomb? They would lord over Israel and threaten them on the regular. This would be massively destabilizing for the region and world.
Final question: Is it harder to build a safe, civilian nuclear power programme compared to a (safe?) nuclear weapons programme? I don't know.
aisenik 21 hours ago [-]
Israel just attacked Iran. Perhaps the perceived bellicosity of Iran is both justified and overblown?
What is the reason to trust Israel, who engaged in subterfuge to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s, over Iran?
Iran attacked Israel with a huge barrage of missiles in October of 2024. No high-horses to ride here.
aisenik 20 hours ago [-]
Indeed. The lowest of the horses, however, is clearly the USA. Our history and our actions (POSIWID is the most effective heuristic in the modern information environment), including the capricious abandonment of the very successful JCPOA, suggest complete dishonesty in this realm. There is zero reason to believe we have any legitimate reason for attacking Iran and every reason to distrust our stated motivations. Iraq was 22 years ago.
We presented outright fabrications to the UN to justify an imperial war after the president campaigned against "nation building." It is hard to ignore the parallels to Iran and Trump, proclaimed "anti war" candidate that you had to vote for to prevent WW3. Here we are.
tptacek 19 hours ago [-]
There are only murderers in this room. And there is only one guarantee: None of us will see heaven.
aisenik 16 hours ago [-]
I am bathed in the light of heaven for my war is in service of justice and peace for all existence. Those who stand in opposition to these goals are an evolutionary dead-end. An answer to the Fermi Paradox.
My father, a middle-class mormon and far-right political enthusiast, once told me in the context of the conflicts in the Middle East, "people will die for their country, but they'll kill for their god." This harrowing indication of his radicalization nonetheless holds as a true and instructive maxim.
Who is your god? For most of America, it is power and the best proxy for power is the demigod of Money. Avarice and greed are in, Christlike works are out. Too woke.
It is literally possible to use all of this incredible technology and productive capacity to enable food security, high quality housing, access to healthcare, unlimited access to the wealth of all human knowledge and digitizable creations, while protecting our only habitable planet and nurturing its biosphere, and so much more, for all of humanity. Yet money and the desire for power will see billions suffer and die in the next century while mass global extinctions will only decelerate due to depletion of species.
Why can't we do better than the current environment of lawless global and domestic violence waged by the US government? It is barbarism.
busterarm 20 hours ago [-]
Iran has been organizing and funding attacks on Israel via proxies for years?
Isn't that subterfuge?
throwaway2037 14 hours ago [-]
I come in good faith. I don't understand the intent of your reply. Can you explain more?
aisenik 20 hours ago [-]
What has Mossad been up to? Just boolin'?
It is possible that mistakes were made in the aftermath of WW2. It is possible that the victors have rewritten history in a favorable light -- in fact, that is the most reasonable expectation. This must not be used to justify genocide for if our society takes that path the victory against the Axis powers is meaningless and evil will have triumphed in the world.
Israel is more than Netanyahu and less than the Jewish people. Humanity must unite and destroy the power structures that incentivize the hyperscale atrocities we are currently manifesting.
aisenik 21 hours ago [-]
It is remarkable to see such intellectual dishonesty from so highly a respected figure here.
Those of you who received adequate Liberal Arts education will see through him, whether you agree with his intended rhetorical outcome or not.
aisenik 22 hours ago [-]
Did I say the Supreme Leader is a benign figure? Iran has problems. Big ones.
You are disingenuous and malicious when you portray my position in this way. The Supreme Leader has a longstanding public opposition to nuclear weapons. He is the respected religious leader of the Iranian government. The actions of the Iranian government, including their adherence to the JCPOA that Trump capriciously discarded, are consistent with this fatwa.
You must provide some other justification for your stance than merely accepting the US propaganda.
tptacek 21 hours ago [-]
We can just disagree about this and let the evidence people can find on their own speak for itself. I find the idea that the SL is "opposed to nuclear weapons" to be risible. Iran bought from AQ Khan!
aisenik 21 hours ago [-]
I have provided information and you have provided innuendo.
tptacek 21 hours ago [-]
If you say so. I'm not interested in litigating further.
aisenik 21 hours ago [-]
Thank you for the engagement.
It is extremely important to document the facile and childish level of argumentation within the industry whose hubris seeks to force the world into the period of its greatest calamities. Society failed to highlight the intellectual immaturity of the Nazis and it has yielded the material reality we exist in today.
Again, I appreciate your labor and contributions to the historical record.
tptacek 21 hours ago [-]
K.
selimthegrim 21 hours ago [-]
You are not providing the complete context.
aisenik 21 hours ago [-]
If someone claims to be providing "the complete context" they are intentionally misleading you.
selimthegrim 20 hours ago [-]
I did not make such a claim.
aisenik 20 hours ago [-]
Crucially, neither have I.
By making that statement you are implying that I am being misleading. The reality is quite the opposite.
selimthegrim 21 hours ago [-]
That fatwa doesn’t bind Khan who is a Sunni of the Hanafi school. It’s like the US having other Five Eyes members spy on its own citizens.
aisenik 19 hours ago [-]
It binds the Islamic Republic of Iran. Are you suggesting something like the Israel-US relationship?
I believe you're referring to the former prime minister of Pakistan? If so, truly a derail. Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
I think the Shia-Sunni relationship is rather more complex than the post-WW2 anglosphere, quite frankly.
selimthegrim 21 hours ago [-]
There were other candidates for supreme leader that had stronger clerical and jurisprudential backgrounds
UltraSane 21 hours ago [-]
"The Supreme Leader has a longstanding public opposition to nuclear weapons"
He is LYING. Because he is a liar. Who lies. Like about opposing nuclear weapons.
aisenik 21 hours ago [-]
Strict adherence to the JCPOA, capriciously discarded by the man who just bombed Iran in my name, suggests that Iran's position was legitimately held.
In fact, it implies that someone else is lying. Probably the country that just did a complete 180 on its intelligence assessment and attacked another country unprovoked, if you want my assessment.
It's not like the USA doesn't have a documented history of lying and engaging in information warfare to justify wars of choice. This isn't even our first time this century.
UltraSane 6 hours ago [-]
You don't build uranium enrichment facilities deep underground if it isn't part of a nuclear weapons project.
UltraSane 15 hours ago [-]
I'm down voted for calling the Supreme Leader of Iran a liar?
NoMoreWars 22 hours ago [-]
That is typically how sovereignty works, yes.
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
No it isn't. Most countries work with other countries under a shared set of principles. Even China and Russia do this to an extent. Where deviation happens, it happens when a country can afford to do it (see: south China sea disputes.) Sometimes, they'll do it anyway and suffer (see: North Korea.)
Doing whatever you want is just opening yourself fully to the full spectrum of game theory outcomes. The leadership in Iran is discovering what that means.
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
Stay in the deal that brought their domestic uranium production to 0. This crisis is entirely Trump's fault for pulling out.
The limits were to sunset starting from 2026 and end by 2031. The deal was to end with Iran being allowed to enrich as much as they wanted to, just a step away from a bomb.
sjsdaiuasgdia 22 hours ago [-]
The point was to build trust that Iran would not continue to pursue nuclear weapons. The trust would be built through the multi-year partnership.
The position you're taking only really works if you start from "Iran will always work towards having a nuclear bomb, no matter what." And yeah, if that's your starting place, you've figured out where that path ends up. You're never going to be satisfied with anything Iran says because your fundamental premise is that they can't be trusted to not pursue a nuclear bomb.
By walking away from the deal, we gave Iran a clear message: "you might as well pursue a bomb because we are always going to act like you are, no matter what you actually do."
yyyk 22 hours ago [-]
>The position you're taking only really works if you start from "Iran will always work towards having a nuclear bomb, no matter what."
No, it's a position that assumes some people there have an interest in a nuclear bomb, and some suspicion is warranted - which means a safe deal needed to have them some distance away from a bomb.
After all, if they just wanted nuclear power, they could have trivially had it without all this fuss. It was always so much cheaper to buy LEU than endure all these sanctions.
aisenik 19 hours ago [-]
> The position you're taking only really works if you start from "Iran will always work towards having a nuclear bomb, no matter what."
Understanding that Iran is religiously opposed to the creation of nuclear weapons with only the caveat that the fatwa declaring the development, acquisition, and use of nuclear weapons against Islamic law may be rescinded in the event of an existential threat to the republic, it naturally follows that people hold that belief because they intend to present an existential threat to Iran.
yyyk 17 hours ago [-]
There's no evidence the fatwa even exists (aside from statements by self-interested parties), much less any details of its contents and any exception it may have. At any point they could point to an exception in subsection 4) c) and do whatever they want. Because the fatwa isn't published, they can add whatever exception they want later. If it really exists and is really meaningful, they would have publicized it in advance and so been bound by it.
aisenik 16 hours ago [-]
I believe the right to "do whatever they want" is one generally valued by sovereign entities. The ability to "do whatever they want" is probably not really a good reason to bomb them. It does sound like a good reason to not capriciously discard the JCPOA, which is an agreement they adhered to restricting their enrichment of uranium that was discarded to no positive end by Donald Trump, the man who is illegally starting another US war of choice as we speak.
Would we have bombed them if they'd secretly been violating the JCPOA and developed nuclear weapons in 2017? It's worked for literally everyone else who's tried it and it is hard to empathize with a perspective in which the United States has true moral authority over a country that we destabilized and have continuously demonized.
yyyk 15 hours ago [-]
>I believe the right to "do whatever they want" is one generally valued by sovereign entities.
Most theocracies do not declare themselves sovereign over God. If it's truly a religious duty than it exists independently of anything in our world.
>The ability to "do whatever they want" is probably not really a good reason to bomb them.
I meant that the fatwa proves nothing until it is publicly published. Bombing was due to the nuclear program and no other reason.
>capriciously discard the JCPOA, which is an agreement they adhered to restricting their enrichment of uranium
The agreement had sunsets, it would have very soon expired. It's better to actually solve problems and not leave them to successors.
>illegally starting another US war of choice
Every modern President violated the War Powers act. It's unworkable.
>Would we have bombed them if they'd secretly been violating the JCPOA
The way some people talk, very likely not.
aisenik 10 hours ago [-]
> The way some people talk, very likely not.
Then it is very obviously a moral imperative for the leadership of Iran to have the ability to rapidly develop a nuclear weapon in order to protect its sovereignty, a concept you deny Iran, and its many people.
foogazi 21 hours ago [-]
Art of the un-deal
defrost 22 hours ago [-]
Enrichment to levels suitable for domestic nuclear power (the goal, and follow on decoupling from Russia as the supplier and extractor of fuel for existing Iran nuclear power station) is a magnitude and more less time and effort than enrichment to levels suitable for weapons.
Isotope separation by centrifuge as a physical process follows the laws of diminishing returns, getting rid of all the uranium variations save the rare target weight takes more and more time as percent purity increases.
"Just a step away" was more a hard bridge to cross back when third party inspectors were at the enrichment centres and leaving locked and logged "long soak" spectrometer instruments behind. It's hard to enrich to greater levels without leaving a ratio fingerprint behind in the gamma spectrum.
YZF 22 hours ago [-]
What was to stop Iran from secretly enriching Uranium in sites inspectors have no access to?
"The revelation that Iran had built major nuclear facilities in secret, without required disclosure to the IAEA, ignited an international crisis and raised questions about the program's true aim."
sjsdaiuasgdia 21 hours ago [-]
By unilaterally leaving the agreement, we told Iran "We are going to act as if you are going to build a bomb, so you might as well build a bomb."
defrost 21 hours ago [-]
That's a tad Descartes before the hordes .. the response that situation in 2002 was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action of 2015 which had plenty of carrots, sticks, and ability to peer into dark places .. but not real support from Isreal or the US who scuppered the plan under Trump.
yyyk 21 hours ago [-]
>follow on decoupling from Russia
You are aware the deal was entirely dependent on Russia, and the follow-on Biden wanted to sign (but couldn't since Iran wouldn't fully cooperate with IAEA) involved Russia even more heavily? There's no other place that both sides accept can store the enriched Uranium or supply fuel rods to Iran.
>Isotope separation by centrifuge as a physical process follows the laws of diminishing returns
It's the other way around. Going from 3 to 20 percent is much harder than 20 to 60 which is harder than 60 to 90. Going to 99.9999% would be tough, but is unnecessary even for nukes.
>"Just a step away" was more a hard bridge to cross back when third party inspectors were at the enrichment centres
They were allowed to enrich to that level under the deal starting in 2031, inspections would have tested if the enriched material was diverted.
Even if they could be effective at such short notice, it would have taken the US being distracted by some other crisis and being unable to act in the short period between detection and weaponization to lead to a nuke.
jghn 22 hours ago [-]
I mean, we could have not torn up the JPCOA for starters
sbmthakur 22 hours ago [-]
Do we have irrefutable evidence that Iran was that close to a nuke?
hypeatei 22 hours ago [-]
The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) released a report in May saying they enriched up to 60% U-235 at one of their facilities[0].
> As previously reported, on 5 December 2024, Iran started feeding the two IR-6 cascades producing UF6 enriched up to 60% U-235 at FFEP with UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235, rather than UF6 enriched up to 5% U-235, without altering the enrichment level of the product. The effect of this change has been to significantly increase the rate of production of UF6 enriched up to 60% at FFEP to over 34 kg of uranium in the form of UF6 per month.
Why would any country enrich uranium to 60% or more?
hwillis 21 hours ago [-]
Radiopharmaceuticals are enriched to 60%. Iran is one of the top producers in the world. Iran has a natural abundance of radioactive isotopes- the background radiation of spots in Iran is extremely high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran
Iran imports radiopharmaceuticals from Canada and that import was never restricted. Besides, radiopharmaceuticals are done with cyclotrons and do not require 60% HEU.
hwillis 18 hours ago [-]
There are dozens of elements and isotopes used in radiopharmacology. Highly enriched uranium is absolutely one of them -hence why energy.gov is posting about it- and it's significantly cheaper than using a particle accelerator to create radioactive isotopes.
yyyk 17 hours ago [-]
HEU is not directly used in radiopharmacology for obvious reasons, the energy.gov posting is about a non-fissile isotope of Uranium and not HEU.
It's much cheaper to use a cyclotron than get massively sanctioned - unless you what you really want is a weapon.
g8oz 19 hours ago [-]
Cato institute has argued it was for leverage in talks with the US. Iranians were quite clear about this, setting timelines for enrichment targets to amp up the pressure after the us withdrew from JCPOA.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
To negotiate back to a prior deal that was actually pretty great for all parties involved.
hypeatei 22 hours ago [-]
No, but it was a significant jump from what they had before. I'm not a fan of what is being done by Israel and the US, to be clear.
sodality2 22 hours ago [-]
True. Weapons grade in approximately 2 months was one estimate given by the Institute for Science and International Security.
throwaway2037 21 hours ago [-]
I have heard similar estimates. I think what is important: It is less than one year. That is pretty quick from the view of regional geopolitics.
Here is a quote that I found from abc.net.au via Google:
> According to the US Institute for Science and International Security, "Iran can convert its current stock of 60 per cent enriched uranium into 233kg of weapon-grade uranium in three weeks at the Fordow plant", which it said would be enough for nine nuclear weapons.
Putting on my black hat for moment: I think Iran's strategy to tip toe up to the line of weapons grade uranium is strategic genius. (Of course, I don't want them to have nuclear weapons!) It provides maximum deniability so they can get as many parts as close as possible before the final 12 months dash to get nuclear weapons.
adgjlsfhk1 21 hours ago [-]
the last bit of refinement is much easier than the initial bits. Natural abundance is 0.7%, so getting to 10% is about halfway to weapons grade and 60% is ~80-90% of the way there.
UltraSane 21 hours ago [-]
But weapons are the ONLY reason to enrich that high.
throwaway2037 21 hours ago [-]
You raise a very good point here, probably the most important consideration if one wishes to defend Israel's and US's recent bombing of Iranian nuclear research sites. I don't know any legitimate civilian purpose to enrich uranium to near-weapons grade... except to eventually produce weapons grade material.
UltraSane 21 hours ago [-]
Honestly Iran NEVER needed to enrich uranium if it only wanted nuclear electricity. It could have imported enriched uranium fuel rods for its nuclear reactor. Spending so much on deeply buried enrichment facilities was ALWAYS about getting nuclear weapons.
throwaway2037 14 hours ago [-]
Of course, it is insane to see so many people in this discussion plainly in denial about the intent of this programme.
UltraSane 7 hours ago [-]
Many people on this thread are rather inexplicably pro-Iran-having-nukes.
sodality2 21 hours ago [-]
Not true. Maybe the only plausible reason Iran has to make them, but that's a different claim.
Eddy_Viscosity2 21 hours ago [-]
The US only need to claim a country has 'weapons of mass destruction' to start a war. Evidence is not required.
tbrownaw 18 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure the claim this time wasn't that they had them, but that they could make them too quickly if they wanted to.
Eddy_Viscosity2 10 hours ago [-]
'has them', 'could make them', it doesn't matter what the claim is when you there no requirement for evidence. There are no penalties for US presidents who lie to start a war.
hackyhacky 22 hours ago [-]
No. In fact, there is no (public) evidence at all.
awongh 22 hours ago [-]
They are manufacturing consent by saying Iran was days away from having nuclear weapons.
cchance 22 hours ago [-]
LOL Daily Show had a show about it Netanyahu has been saying Iran will have nukes within weeks, since 2008
lwansbrough 21 hours ago [-]
Well let's not forget stuxnet... Iran hasn't been left uncontested. They have faced considerable setbacks along the way. They've been trying to develop [all of the things you need for nuclear weapons] for some time, and more recently had been accelerating those efforts.
Netanyahu may exaggerate the imminence of an Iranian nuke, but the reason Iran hasn't built a nuke is because Israel has been repeatedly setting Iran back in its progress over the years.
The single biggest setback was the JCPOA or the "Iran nuclear deal," which Netanyahu pressured Trump to unilaterally renege on.
Between this and Ukraine, the entire world knows now that even agreements with the previously highly-trusted counterparty of the USA won't keep you safe. Only nuclear weapons can keep you safe.
Off to the races!
yyyk 21 hours ago [-]
The deal was on only for about 3 years. Iran has been enriching to some extent since 2009. I'd would think there was a lot more in setting it back than a failed deal.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
You'd be wrong. Iran actively got rid of nearly all of its stockpile under the JCPOA.
10,000kg down to 300.
Clearly that was all for nothing, so no country will ever agree to a similar deal ever again. The deal worked great. Bibi and Trump failed.
yyyk 21 hours ago [-]
Iran did not have the tech to get beyond 20% at the time. The deal gave them time and funds for that, which is hardly nonproliferation work.
>Clearly that was all for nothing, so no country will ever agree to a similar deal ever again.
Well, yeah, bombing Libya was a huge error, so you end up between a bad deal and bombings. But that's inconvenient politically so nobody mentions who was President then.
sorcerer-mar 21 hours ago [-]
> which is hardly nonproliferation work.
Except for the part that it reduced proliferation, reduced stockpiles, and dramatically increased breakout time...? You think a workable solution is to just keep a country perpetually impoverished so it never even has the money required to learn how to enrich?
You don't understand the logic of nuclear weapons, do you?
As Ali Bhutto said: "We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get our own [nuclear weapon].... We have no other choice!”
> Well, yeah, bombing Libya was a huge error, so you end up between a bad deal and bombings
Say more. What's the relevance?
yyyk 21 hours ago [-]
>Except for the part that it reduced proliferation, reduced stockpiles, and dramatically increased breakout time
The breakout time was _reduced_ in the long run, since Iran was allowed to keep stocks and enrich (limits were to be removed starting from 2026 up to 2031).
>You think a workable solution is to just keep a country perpetually impoverished so it never even has the money required to learn how to enrich
They could just give up.
>You don't understand the logic of nuclear weapons, do you?
I do. They want it for offensive purposes, so it's best to handle it when it's easy. It would have been easier to handle AlQaeda without the risk of Pakistani nukes falling to it.
>Say more. What's the relevance?
Literally read the other talking points on the thread on how signing disarmament deals are cuz see how Qadaffi ended up. US did not have to make that choice.
sorcerer-mar 20 hours ago [-]
Breakout time was not reduced lol. You have a deal, then you get another deal, then you get another deal.
"I just got a 1 year discount with a vendor"
The wise man lowered his head and muttered: "No, you have earned a price increase in 12 months."
> They could just give up.
Which makes literally no sense, as we are seeing. The only sensible move for any country is to develop a nuclear weapon as quickly and secretly as possible.
yyyk 20 hours ago [-]
>You have a deal, then you get another deal
>The only sensible move for any country is to develop a nuclear weapon as quickly and secretly as possible.
That's in contradiction, no? Except there never was any plan or idea on how to get another deal. Iran would have been in a position where no deal was possible, and all the same arguments against what happened now would actually apply against a x100 stronger Iran.
sorcerer-mar 20 hours ago [-]
I get the feeling you're willfully playing dumb, but to take it step by step:
Now, after having proven that deals mean nothing both in Ukraine and Iran, the only sensible move is to develop nuclear weapons.
Prior to us having broken both of these deals, there was a believable argument for the US being an honest broker who can ensure security in lieu of you having your own nuclear weapons.
> Except there never was any plan or idea on how to get another deal
What do you mean? You do the same thing again: economic normalization for non-proliferation.
yyyk 17 hours ago [-]
>Now, Prior
Ukraine started in 2014. Libya in 2011. The truth of the world was already clear at that point, as well as Iranian intentions. The JCPOA was never going to handle a Iranian nuke but would have facilitated it. You cannot use economic incentives to fix a broken world, and Iran had many other motives for nukes.
sorcerer-mar 9 hours ago [-]
Big if true: you cannot use incentives to mitigate other incentives!
archsurface 22 hours ago [-]
Facilities deep in a mountain, no IAEA access, refusal to negotiate, October 7th, ... You'd have to be quite naive to think it's all above board. (Instead of under a mountain).
awongh 22 hours ago [-]
Let's be clear Iran is the bad guy. But so was Saddam Hussein and he didn't have the weapons they said he did.
On Fox News they'll tell you nuclear war is imminent but they say that because they want to bomb, not because it's true or not. They're only justifying their actions, not reacting to a threat.
archsurface 21 hours ago [-]
I don't watch Fox News. Blair and Bush lying about Iraq, doesn't mean Iran isn't working towards weapons. I'm all for prosecuting Blair and Bush, always have been. This is not a matter in which you can just sit back and say "well, hopefully it's all innocent". Iran had to be open - they were the opposite.
arp242 20 hours ago [-]
> Blair and Bush lying about Iraq, doesn't mean Iran isn't working towards weapons
You're correct. However, Netanyahu also claimed that Iran was behind the two assassination attempts on Trump during the campaign trail. A laughably transparent lie obviously designed to woo Trump. Then there's that this war is politically very convenient for him as it distracts from some Knesset political drama, increasing international criticism of the Gaza situation, and it obstructs Trump's attempts at a politician solution with Iran.
I don't know if Iran has nuclear weapons. Clearly they've been playing with fire for a long time but that doesn't mean they actually have nuclear weapons. But I consider anything the Netanyahu government says as deeply and profoundly untrustworthy. So colour me highly sceptical on it all.
Iraq was also not giving sufficient access to inspectors, which was one of the reasons people were convinced he did have WMDs. Things like "you can just sit back and say 'well, hopefully it's all innocent'" is pretty much what people were saying at the time as well.
Wars have unpredictable outcomes, all of this may very well cause more problems than it solves.
anonnon 22 hours ago [-]
The alternatives were that they were enriching well beyond peaceful thresholds primarily for leverage in negotiations, or that they wanted "breakout" capability, so they could build multiple bombs quickly, if they ever chose to. But these alternatives can still be unacceptable from the standpoint of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation.
hwillis 21 hours ago [-]
Iran is one of the top producers or radiopharmaceuticals from highly enriched materials including uranium. This should be unsurprising because Iran has a natural abundance of radioactive isotopes- the background radiation of spots in Iran is extremely high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran
There are some ridiculous pro-palestine/anti-israel takes out there that says that the politics of the region are more stable when Iran has nuclear weapons.
megous 21 hours ago [-]
How'd any of that be a problem, even if it was true?
sundaeofshock 22 hours ago [-]
I can understand the Iranian reluctance to negotiate with the US. Trump has demonstrated that he is particularly honorable.
archsurface 22 hours ago [-]
That would be pointlessly defeatist. Also, other parties are involved to bear witness.
hackyhacky 22 hours ago [-]
They have been saying that (at least) since 1995.
YZF 22 hours ago [-]
Israel has been talking about the threat for some time and Iran over time has broadened its nuclear program and has enriched more and more Uranium to higher and higher levels.
Why does Iran need all this enriched Uranium? Why is it investing so much in this? Why does it invest so much in its ballistic missile program?
Would Israel be a threat to Iran if Iran didn't continuously declare it wants to wipe Israel off the map and take all these actions to follow up on that?
Israel is tiny. It can't afford the risk of a regime that openly declares it wants to wipe it off the map and has acted towards that goal to get nuclear missiles.
awongh 22 hours ago [-]
One of the problems is that we became the defenders of Israel. And it's a situation we created when we created a religious extremist government in Iran.
YZF 21 hours ago [-]
The US and Israel have a long standing partnership. During the cold war the USSR backed Syria and Egypt (E.g.) and the US backed Israel. That was not different than other places in the world where the US pushed back against soviet expansion. Unlike Europe though there was never a formal defense pact. Also unlike Europe there were actual wars with people getting killed.
I'm not sure the US "created" the religious extremist government in Iran. It's a complicated story. But the Shah was hated and like other similar dictators to date the US was happy to support that regime and turn a blind eye to the atrocities against the Iranian citizenry. Just like it is happy to work with other dictatorial regimes today as long as their interests align. When the revolution happened the Ayatollah was already well positioned to take advantage of the situation. Many of the people who rose up were eventually lined up against the wall and executed, like tends to happen in these revolutions.
- it's disgusting that the USA is always like, oops, my bad, we messed up when we helped you kill all those people, we were doing our best (sometimes in the case of Iraq going back and forth three times!)
- now that we're here, not sure what else we can do (we shouldn't let Iran fund proxy wars and have nukes)
YZF 21 hours ago [-]
The US messed up a lot of things e.g. in the Americas. Before them the Europeans also messed plenty of stuff up.
But the US has also at times been a positive force.
I don't think the way to fix "messing up" that is to just disappear and step away. Like it or not, the US is the leader of the free world. Retreating means people like Putin and Xi and going to step into the vacuum.
But I agree the US should act responsibly. I'm also unsure where the current path is leading. It is weird that you declare two weeks for negotiations and then you attack though I'm pretty sure the negotiations would have led nowhere.
cchance 20 hours ago [-]
They said it was weeks away in 2008, 2012, 2017 and 2023... and now we're back here again
archsurface 22 hours ago [-]
Well, it takes about 20 years. Throw in a virus, assassinations, inspections, ... sounds about right.
dardeaup 22 hours ago [-]
Who is 'they'? United States, Israel, media outlet?
flyinglizard 22 hours ago [-]
What’s the OTHER justification for a hardened nuclear program and having a pile of enriched material that can only be used for weapons?
This is the IAEA report [0], claiming enough material for 9 weapons.
Iran is the aggressor here. Iran has been funding and arming multiple proxies to fire missles into Israel for the past 50 years
nsingh2 19 hours ago [-]
This conveniently ignores decades of context. The CIA-backed coup that toppled Iran’s elected government, the sweeping sanctions, support for Saddam during a brutal war, assassinations and cyber-attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Painting Iran as the sole aggressor skips the part where outside powers kept breaking the "rules" they imposed. Also forgetting that Iran's current repressive and theocratic government is itself a direct consequence of US interference.
827a 17 hours ago [-]
You can let this context paralyze you into feeling that there's no morally right response to any action anyone takes in this complex world. Or, you can just say: what they're doing is wrong, so we're going to stop it. If you don't learn to do the latter, you'll spend the rest of your life beholden to the tyranny of the people who do.
impossiblefork 14 hours ago [-]
I think my own thought isn't 'what they're doing is wrong' but 'what they're doing is dangerous'.
Thus in my view it kind of doesn't matter whether what they're doing is right or wrong, and the sensible goal is to simply prevent the dangerous stuff without necessarily judging them. Thus limited bombings focused on nuclear enrichment plants, rather than some wider campaign.
The problem as I see it is that it may not work, and that nuclear bomb development might be quite easy.
827a 7 hours ago [-]
Right right; and Americans have not forgotten how "he has nukes" was very much a reason for starting the post-9/11 forever wars across the rest of the middle east. Of course; no nukes were found. If there's any foreign (or domestic) policy decision the vast majority of Americans agree on, its avoiding putting American boots on the ground in the middle east.
1. No one should have nukes.
2. That probably won't happen in our lifetimes, so the second best world is: No one new should have nukes, and those who do have them should have as few as feasible, and fewer every year.
3. Global superpowers, obviously including the United States but others as well, have the moral authority to police the restriction of nuclear weapons development in other countries. We should work with international agencies, we should start with diplomatic solutions, progress to economic sanctions, then progress to unilateral, targeted, kinetic strikes. Try non-violent means first. Minimize loss of civilian life.
4. There is no distinction, in my mind, between "trying to develop nuclear weapons" and "successfully developing nuclear weapons". There is no distinction, in my mind, between 60% enrichment and 90% enrichment, or whatever. Non-nuclear countries should attempt no stage of development, at all, and if they do, should see their efforts stopped by any means necessary. Very hypothetically: If a non-nuclear nation lays a single brick to build a structure destined to aid in nuclear weapons development, I would support destroying that brick; there is no stage too early to intervene. Obviously this is hypothetical and there are realistic feasibility concerns with that, but when speaking morally/ethically.
5. All of this is true regardless of the governance structure or ally/enemy relationship of the country, but it should be obviously true, in triplicate, for a nation ran by religious extremists, who has a history of funding terrorist groups who attack our ships and allies, spanning decades, who tramples on the human rights of women and minorities in their country... to be frank, we have launched full-scale invasions of countries far better. If Iran wants a shred of my pity, their leadership could start by making any effort to join the 21st century in any way except weapons development. But, they don't. Why anyone defends them for any reason is so far beyond my understanding that I'm convinced half the people in these comments are russian disinfo bots.
impossiblefork 5 hours ago [-]
>4. There is no distinction, in my mind, between "trying to develop nuclear weapons" and "successfully developing nuclear weapons". There is no distinction, in my mind, between 60% enrichment and 90% enrichment, or whatever. Non-nuclear countries should attempt no stage of development, at all, and if they do, should see their efforts stopped by any means necessary. Very hypothetically: If a non-nuclear nation lays a single brick to build a structure destined to aid in nuclear weapons development, I would support destroying that brick; there is no stage too early to intervene. Obviously this is hypothetical and there are realistic feasibility concerns with that, but when speaking morally/ethically.
I see this as an unacceptable position. Sweden will probably develop nuclear weapons, either on its own or with EU partners. I would prefer this effort to not be resisted.
Poland probably will as well. So position 4 is I think insane.
Instead, Iran should be prevented from developing nuclear weapons because they are crazy, and should only be prevented from doing so because they are crazy. There are some current nuclear weapons states that should have been prevented from developing nuclear weapons, but that is tolerable.
Furthermore, I think position 1 is also false, since I believe that nuclear weapons actually provide deterrence and prevent conventional war.
If the Iranians weren't crazy it would be good that they had nukes, and it would stabilize the entire Middle East, reducing the belligerence of other entities.
bravesoul2 16 hours ago [-]
Can the US say that "this is wrong" to their friends too?
Nope.
It is not about "this is wrong".
It is about "this is in the leading classes interests"
bigolkevin 19 hours ago [-]
...in response to Israeli acts of terrorism and crimes against humanity...
kurtis_reed 19 hours ago [-]
...in response to...
mrkeen 18 hours ago [-]
Turns out you can't just put your country in the middle of other countries without the shit hitting the fan.
Israel isn't the US, but I can understand being confused about that given the US seems to always do what's in Israel's best interest.
kurtis_reed 19 hours ago [-]
The comment was just saying that its parent was incorrect that Israel was the aggressor.
827a 19 hours ago [-]
What? Do you really believe the world seriously beholds itself to "do as I say not as I do"? There's no such thing as international law. There's just self-interested nations who have always only done what is in their best interest. There's no higher authority.
So, in your reality, China says "but, but, you guys got to invade Iraq and attack Iran unprovoked, that means we get to invade Taiwan" and we just have to sit back and let it happen because... reasons. Nope. That's not how it works. We don't hold everyone to the same standards, and we certainly don't hold ourselves to the standards we police the world to hold itself to. That's the way it works.
Life isn't fair. Get used to it.
jmward01 17 hours ago [-]
I don't believe in fair. I do however believe that maybe we can learn and change and expect our leadership to do the same. Cooperation and diplomacy lead to far higher long term returns than might makes right as we have seen time and time again. What we are seeing now however is a policy of maximizing the minimum which will force others to do the same and leads to everyone, including the US, being far worse off.
827a 17 hours ago [-]
Please do not lose grasp on what we're talking about here: These were nuclear enrichment facilities with the goal of enriching fissile material for nuclear weapons. These were not civilian, or even conventional military, targets. There is a gulf of difference between one overnight mission to dampen the nuclear prospects of a dictatorial, authoritarian, religious-extremist regime, and China launching a multi-modal invasion of a near-peer ally.
jmward01 15 hours ago [-]
I believe the complete dominance of the preemptive attacks shows how little capability they actually have to use any such weapons and that likely trickles down to any development of those weapons. I no longer believe in the 'They have WMD and will take over the world in days' wolf cries. Iran is not some nice country being picked on, but the entities attacking them also aren't being truthful in their reasons either. I have no love for any of the parties in this fight at the moment. They are all wrong, but one side did throw the first punch so they are, in my view, the most wrong here and the US just backed them.
827a 7 hours ago [-]
And I believe that you don't need a modern weapons platform to smuggle one of these weapons into your enemy's territory and cause major damage. Iran has a documented and clear history of funding and outfitting organizations who would love to do exactly that. There's broad global agreement that Iran has the ambition to develop nuclear weapons, and that these facilities were key to that ambition.
Its astounding to me that there's this much discord on these strikes. Sure; everyone sucks, politicians suck, blah blah blah, we're on the same page on that. That's not an excuse to do nothing and persistently disagree with every decision any government makes.
jmward01 6 hours ago [-]
Diplomacy isn't 'doing nothing'. Trump 1.0 destroyed efforts that were working and Israel has proven time and time again that they don't care about diplomacy so long as they have bombs to throw. My points are still valid, this strategy of preemptive attack is a terrible signal to the world and won't solve the long term problem.
nicce 18 hours ago [-]
> There's no such thing as international law. There's just self-interested nations who have always only done what is in their best interest.
If you think about that a little bit more, you may see that internal laws can change the best interests if coencequences are big enough. And maybe that is the point.
19 hours ago [-]
k4rli 15 hours ago [-]
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tim333 12 hours ago [-]
Wikipedia definition: "violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims"
Taking out enemy nukes may not fit.
dijit 12 hours ago [-]
I'm really tired of people saying "actual terrorism"; as if there's not an actual definition of what terrorism is.
For those following along; the definition of terrorism is:
> the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
Which civilians are hiding in uranium enrichment plants? Sites that are claimed to not be for nuclear power, but for making weapons.
pelorat 13 hours ago [-]
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twixfel 11 hours ago [-]
And then for the same Americans who utterly despise Europe to declare how Europe has become a shithole due to refugees and boost support for our right wing populist parties.
Koshkin 22 hours ago [-]
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anonu 20 hours ago [-]
A consequential night for Israel: peace for many decades to come. I worry, however, that peace through bombing is not a permanent solution. Peace comes through diplomacy. Ideology does not die in the rubble.
20 hours ago [-]
sealeck 20 hours ago [-]
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k310 22 hours ago [-]
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kjewsnow 20 hours ago [-]
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BolexNOLA 20 hours ago [-]
What on earth
bjourne 5 hours ago [-]
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t0lo 20 hours ago [-]
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PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
America, the west, much of the not-west, and even much of the middle east, have been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades.
In large swaths of the middle east, Iran is considered a dangerous enemy. A nuclear armed Iran would quickly lead to nuclear proliferation throughout the middle east.
This isn't some recent initiative thought up for the heck of it: it's been on ongoing focus for a very long time.
20 hours ago [-]
BerlinKebab 3 hours ago [-]
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nsoonhui 16 hours ago [-]
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impossiblefork 14 hours ago [-]
People almost always rally behind the political leadership when attacked by another country.
I could even imagine that this has happened before in Iran and that the Iran-Iraq war was an important reason why the Mullahs could consolidate their power.
But this is still bad, may be illegal, and isn't over yet. We don't actually know what they hit, if those sites were empty, and what's happened to ~1/2 ton of highly-enriched uranium or the regime's ability to produce more.
reassess_blind 22 hours ago [-]
Illegal? I don’t think that factors into any decision made here.
cmurf 3 hours ago [-]
Illegal war started by a man constitutionally ineligible to be president.
The only reason why he ran for office was to keep himself out of prison.
John Adams said the Constitution is intended for a moral (virtuous) people. Meaning, it isn't self executing. You need people willing to commit to its guidance. And yet just enough of the people gave consent to be governed to a man who sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the U.S. when that VPOTUS, Mike Pence, refused Trump's order to overturn an election that Trump had lost.
How can corruption of this magnitude be described as virtuous?
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
Very definitely is not illegal in American law.
UltraSane 15 hours ago [-]
Iran NEVER needed to enrich uranium if it only wanted nuclear electricity. It could have imported enriched uranium fuel rods for its nuclear reactor. Spending so much on deeply buried enrichment facilities was ALWAYS about getting nuclear weapons.
thehappypm 11 hours ago [-]
Why did they even want nuclear energy to begin with? A country so wildly fossil fuel rich as Iran has no incentive to produce expensive nuclear energy..
seshagiric 5 hours ago [-]
I think Netanyahu cleverly played on Trump's ego to get him to strike Iran.
lhousa 5 hours ago [-]
Why do people talk like this is all just one person’s decision? There’s an entire government apparatus involved advisors, military leadership, intelligence agencies. It’s not a dictatorship where one guy just snaps his fingers and things happen. I just can't believe this whole thread.
13 hours ago [-]
0xbadcafebee 18 hours ago [-]
Could be a good way to boost the economy amidst a trade war while simultaneously doubling-down on protectionism. On the one hand we usually profit from wars, on the other hand we lose trading partners when we do our usual human rights violations shtick.
I predict this is a ploy to try to get us into a war, so Trump can have his third term, rejecting calls to step down "because we're at war". It's a little early, but our kids are already used to being in 20-year-long pointless wars in the Middle East.
Findecanor 10 hours ago [-]
I think the contrary. Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which more than a quarter of the world's oil gets shipped.
The world price of oil is then expected to go up, and the US economy is very oil-dependent.
Other oil producers would profit from this, ... including Russia's state-run oil company, which would help them fund their war in Ukraine.
PeterHolzwarth 17 hours ago [-]
On the contrary, nobody wants a nuclear armed Iran. It's been an open not-even-secret for decades that America is very active, on many fronts, in trying to delay or remove Iran's growing capability to create nuclear weapons.
lunarboy 17 hours ago [-]
That Trump's own appointed Head of Intelligence denied? The least republicans can do is align their own fucking story.
PeterHolzwarth 16 hours ago [-]
That would help, but it doesn't change the fact that America and the broader west has been working hard for decades to counter Iran's nuclear weapons program.
OfficeChad 16 hours ago [-]
[dead]
t0lo 13 hours ago [-]
By now, most people trust a nuclear armed stable iran over an erratic, war hungry nuclear armed israel
mandmandam 14 hours ago [-]
> we usually profit from wars
That's a huge lie, if 'we' is to be read as 'Americans' and not 'the 1%'.
78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck [0].
'We' - taxpayers - 'spent' trillions and trillions of dollars on war in the middle east. What was the return on investment? We could have housed every American, eliminated student debt, gone 100% clean energy, and ended world hunger; with change left over.
Obviously complicated and dangerous, but I’m surprised (or, not really) how many people here are quick to condemn Israel and the US, with no consideration that the official Iranian policy is the ELIMINATION of Israel. Of course Israel cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Israel has many nukes, and in fact does not commit genocide, despite being capable. Some Islamic regimes would be much more likely to use that power, IMO.
tasuki 6 hours ago [-]
> Israel has many nukes, and in fact does not commit genocide
This is being debated. A European judge who questioned this recently had his email access revoked by Microsoft.
dlubarov 6 hours ago [-]
You mean Khan? The charges he tried to prosecute didn't include genocide. Khan's initial list included extermination, but that was rejected by the pre-trial chamber.
croes 7 hours ago [-]
The question is if Iran really was nearly capable of building nukes.
Everything else doesn’t matter as long the words aren’t followed by action.
Rover222 7 hours ago [-]
Of course they were near. Their mostly highly enriched uranium could have been further enriched to a crude bomb level within weeks. The question is not if they were near, but if they intended on crossing that line. Not something that Israel could just sit and wait for.
Maybe they were far from implementing modern nuclear weapon designs, but there are simple applications like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon delivered by ground. With that approach the bomb assembly is pretty straightforward engineering once they have sufficiently enriched uranium (which they already did the bulk of the work for).
andrewinardeer 22 hours ago [-]
I wonder if Iran will now activate the sleeper cells they have in the US?
v5v3 11 hours ago [-]
All the talk in the west is about extreme Muslims, or extreme Jews.
But every group has their extremists.
We need to not forget the extreme Christians...
frob 9 hours ago [-]
Such as the US secretary of "defense", Pete Hegseth, who has the Latin phrase for "god wills it" tattooed on his bicep. A phrase that is also the motto of the first crusade.
v5v3 9 hours ago [-]
Yes. The people are being lied to, the extreme elements of the two largest global religions, whichever it happens to be, will always be at some direct or indirect conflict. And it's a shame one side is pretending they are not driving it, but that their tiny little proxy country is.
fastball 18 hours ago [-]
What is to stop Iran from putting their next enrichment facility deep underground in the middle of Tehran?
Seems even Israel might be more hesitant to target it at that point.
nicce 18 hours ago [-]
Likely the reason to bomb Iran now in the first hand was internal politics of Israel. Controlling party was losing votes. Now, few bombs and problem solved.
andy_ppp 15 hours ago [-]
Just out of interest are large parts of Iran set to be radioactive for tens of thousands of years? What happens to all the radioactive dust? What is stopping Iran producing dirty ballistic missiles that would make Tel Aviv uninhabitable? Just the threat of nuclear retaliation?
wvbdmp 10 hours ago [-]
As I understand it, radiation is more or less a non-issue here, because uranium is only very weakly radioactive. There may be some uranium pollution at the immediate sites, but nothing like clouds of radiation blowing across the land with the wind.
throwanem 14 hours ago [-]
May as well get on the record here and now I'm against it, I guess. Not that anyone's asking my opinion, I'm from among the social classes whose job it is to go get killed in these things so the wealthy have something to be erect and/or lachrymose about. But this way at least when I'm old and facing kidney failure I can tell some smug young snot I espoused their politics before they learned the word "cool."
ozgrakkurt 14 hours ago [-]
All the discussion about who is right, wo would win etc. aside. Israel should be a big wakeup call to muslim countries. With so little population and surrounded by so many hostile countries, they manage to be so strong and be able to defend themselves.
It is a big shame that many muslim countries are under dysfunctional governments and struggling to make progress so they can’t even protect themselves.
Personally I don’t agree with any kind of war but it is not realistic to expect everything to be fine while fighting inside your country, with a backwards mindset, discussing religion etc. not working honestly and expecting to prosper.
password54321 8 hours ago [-]
The counterbalance is Turkey at the moment. Saudi Arabia seems to be a careful observer much more interested in business than military conquest and much of the rest of the middle east is already crippled.
Most Muslim countries have horrifically high rates of consanguineous marriage, which directly results in reduced intelligence, increased birth defects, and other worse health outcomes. It also gives rise to dysfunctional, competitive clan structures that fragment and corrupt society: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/cousin-marriage-conu...
These countries will never be competitive and non-dysfunctional until they cut back on the practice.
If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading up on the GBU-57 "bunker buster" bomb, because it is some Merrie Melodies Acme brand munitions. It's deliberately as heavy as they can make a bomb, not with explosives but just with mass. They should have shaped it like a giant piano.
For those who didn't know: There are multiple charges of corruption against him, which he is probably guilty of. But as long as he can lead Israel in a state of emergency, he can have those delayed, or perhaps even work around them.
This new war against Iran also diverts attention away from what is happening in Gaza. The starvation has entered a new critical phase. The populace has been concentrated, so they can no longer work the fields. The number of sites that are handing out food aid have been greatly reduced, and dozens of people are killed every day by Israeli soldiers while they are trying to get to the sites.
For anyone who is not following the trial, as soon as the prosecution's case-in-chief was over, the judges publicly notified the prosecution that they should drop the bribery charges as they are unlikely to be able to prove them.
The prosecution case for briberty was built on a hypothesized meeting in which Netanyahu supposedely instructed the director general of the ministry of communications to serve the interests of Elovitch.
During cross examination, the defense managed to prove conclusively that such a meeting, as described, could not have occurred. They also showed that the presocution had the evidence to show it could not have occurred.
Don't assume guilt or innocence based on heavily politisized reporting.
https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/local/409910/ (use Google Translate)
the 20 years leading up to trump, calling every republican a nazi, has completely destroyed the meaning of the word. trump is actually doing a lot of fascist leaning stuff this time around, and you could possibly use that word appropriately but it is currently meaningless.
Soldiers are murdering an entire population- or as many of them as they can, seemingly- for political purposes that desire that population to simply not exist anymore. To say that is _not_ a genocide devalues the meaning of the word.
If Iraq got some sort of super advanced technology that made them the superpower in the world, would they be justified if they:
- Started bombing US cities, including hospitals, schoolsetc and killing US civilians?
- Would they be justified in cutting off food and water supply to all of the US?
- Sniping kids and people waving white flags in the head?
Gaza doesn't have a democratically elected government, and one of the reasons Palestine (of which Gaza is a region) does not have a democratically elected government is that Israel has exercised its power as an occupying power administering large parts of Palestine directly and controlling the rest indirectly to prevent elections which have been jointly agreed on by the two main factions.
And they’ve done that specifically to maintain the current violent and divided status quo, which they leverage as pretext to continue their long policy of genocide.
But it's not necessary to murder an entire population for it to count as genocide. Any attempt to destroy a people counts, including forced sterilization, re-education, mass deportations, etc.
But it's also clear that Israel has explicitly targeted civilians, help workers, journalists, refugee camps, food distribution, and I've even read about them shooting people hiding in churches. None of those are valid targets.
Yes, it is.
It fits all the criteria of genocide AND ethnic cleansing.
- Starving civilians? https://press.un.org/en/2025/sc16060.doc.htm
- Killing children https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0eq9lq7xr1o
- Not allowing aid to reach people https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/20/israel-still-b...
- Bombing hospitals https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c4g28z483eko
- Putting people in concentration camps https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/...
It fits ALL the criteria of a genocide.
> trump is actually doing a lot of fascist leaning
He is, because he is a fascist authoritarian dictator
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
Here's the basics:
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Read. Note that numbers don't matter, intent does. Kidnapping a single kid can almost be genocide and an attack with 1000 civilian victims can fail to qualify as a genocide. Now go and google "Hamas charter" and read. Intent is pretty damn clear.Israel is not intending to destroy an ethnic group. They're simply not. Hamas, in contrast, is. The organization's entire existence is centered around their intent to commit genocide.
This is also the reason Russia's actions in Ukraine, meant to destroy the Ukrainian nation and identity, ARE warcrimes but Ukraine's (much more limited) actions inside Russia don't qualify. Despite the fact that Ukraine is killing people in Russia. Of course propaganda bots are trying to confuse both issues.
So in other words, by the UN definition, by the ACTUAL criteria:
1) Israel's war in Gaza is NOT a genocide.
2) Hamas' attack on 10/7, intended to wipe Israel off the map by killing Jews, was genocide.
3) a whole number of Hamas' actions outside of the 10/7 attack ALSO qualify as genocide, as the intent is clear (such as their actions when they got elected, to give an example of something that DOES qualify as genocide against Palestinians ... but of course committed by Hamas)
The simple fact is that Hamas, and frankly a lot of Palestinians, just like Russia, want to commit genocide. That is what makes the difference according to the criteria.
Israel ALSO publicizes their intent in Gaza, and ... it's not eliminating en entire population, it's "Israel's campaign has four stated goals: to destroy Hamas, to free the hostages, to ensure Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, and to return displaced residents of Northern Israel." [3]
So, again, the conclusion is that Hamas commits genocide, including against Palestinians (and Israeli, and Jews, and Lebanese, and Jordanians, and ... as evidenced in other documents, and Israel does not.
It's even worse than that, because READ the documents ... Hamas explicitly states that committing genocide in Palestine and Israel against Jews and "Palestinian traitors" ... is the start. They clearly state their intent to do so worldwide, on essentially everyone, as that will bring the islamic second coming. Yes, really, that's what it says.
But of course the only explanation can be that Palestinians have been lying about their intent when they're killing people and Israel has been lying about their intent too. That's the only possible explanation.
[1] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/hamas.asp
[2] http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_invasion_of_the_Gaza_S...
The wall separates farmers from their land, and has made it nearly impossible for Palestinians to live their life, to go to work, etc. And Gaza is a ghetto; an open-air prison, with way too many people, and no way for them to build a normal life. Israel has also kicked Palestinians out of their homes in order to give them to Jews.
I'm not denying that Hamas is also genocidal; they clearly and openly are. And probably more so in intent, but a lot less so in capability. Israel has been killing and disrupting a lot more Palestinian lives than the other way around.
Second these are the basics, not the entire treaty. ANY object used by any adversary for military purposes, attacks or coordinating attacks, including hospitals and schools, is a valid target.
And that is ALSO not the entire story. For example, most targets can be attacked as soon as any commander thinks they're used by the enemy for attacks, without any warning. This applies to houses for example. But not hospitals. For hospitals, a warning must be given first, then, I believe minimum 2 hours after the warning, an attack against a hospital is legal.
There is NOTHING that has absolute immunity. To give another example: if a faction fires from within a protest of otherwise innocent people, returning fire is not a warcrime. Not even when innocents get hit.
Based on news reporting, what Israel is doing in Gaza checks multiple items.
The result probably just desensitised people to what was going on since every little infraction the right did seemed to make them a nazi.
Here is the UN definition for genocide. While you normally can't prove a negative, each jot and tittle of the definition is clear in the Gazans' case, so I leave it to you to figure out why you're so cautious to call a spade a spade and call a genocide a genocide.
> The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people. Later on, Raphäel Lemkin led the campaign to have genocide recognised and codified as an international crime.
> Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/96-I). It was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Convention has been ratified by 153 States (as of April 2022). The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly stated that the Convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law. This means that whether or not States have ratified the Genocide Convention, they are all bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law. The ICJ has also stated that the prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm of international law (or ius cogens) and consequently, no derogation from it is allowed.
> The definition of the crime of genocide as contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention was the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States in 1948 at the time of drafting the Convention. Genocide is defined in the same terms as in the Genocide Convention in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 6), as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions. Many States have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law; others have yet to do so.
> # Definition
> Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
> ## Article II*
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
> Killing members of the group;
> Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
> Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
> *Elements of the crime*
> The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.
> The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
> 1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
> 2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
> 2a. Killing members of the group
> 2b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
> 2c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
> 2d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
> 2e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
> The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique. In addition, case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.
> Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.”
[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
Please don’t delete this thread. Yes it’s getting pretty heated, but it’s by far the most rational discussion of this topic I’ve seen in a while. Plus I’ve learnt a few things, which tends to be a positive signal for quality
Well, that's kind of true. The Iran war has certainly stopped proceedings against Netanyahu, because the courts are shut down - along with much of the country.
That said, this can't last much because the economy is completely shut down, and the trials against him were ongoing, eve amidst the Gaza war.
So he can't just indefinitely put off the trial against him.
Unless he changes the law, which he's tried on multiple occasions
Also, don't mix up a politician's personal opinions and official policy.
Its a complex, long standing war and not the responsibility of any single person.
There is nothing political about that, and any measure of righteousness in what lead to it is irrelevant.
This is literally how every war since time has gone. The "Starvation" nomenclature is propganda, which to their credit they are CRUSHING at.
International organizations already warned that this might happen if the Israelis and USA would try to supply the aid directly by themselves, because this requires a level of expertise that they simply don't have. However, Netanyahu wanted to take matters in his own hands and the result was another crime against humanity.
One-sided proof. The Isreali already made themselves impossible by banning the press.
Case 1 - as Minister of Communications he, allegedly, tried to get a tax extension for a company whose owners had given him expensive cigars and jewelry to his wife (worth $3100). The extension was not granted. He also tried to get a US visa for one of the owners.
Case 2 - One of the newspapers in Israel said that if he gave them advantages over a competing newpaper they would paint Bibi and his family in a positive light in their coverage
*Case 3 - seemingly similar to Case 2, a large news website offered to portray Bibi in a better light if he would push through regulatory changes as Minisiter of Communications.
Favorable coverage was the original charge (סיקור אוהד). However, since this website was exteremely hostile to Netanyahu, the charge was changed to being unusually responsive* to requests from Netanyahu's spokespeople (הענות חריגה).
Bombs including and especially large not particularly sophisticated bombs were dropped on entire buildings preferentially at night to ensure the target would be likely to be home with their wife and family and you know any other families in the same building.
Previously such strikes with very large numbers of collateral damage were authorized to kill top members of Hamas. Now they were authorized to hopefully an 18 year old cook irrespective of the 7 children that would burn to death painfully in the fire.
They recovered around 150 hostages at the cost of 50,000 children being killed or injured.
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-m...
Remember that Gaza isn't a democracy. Hamas is 50k people out of 2M of which the number of people that actually have decision making power would fit in a small room. Most people in Gaza aren't Hamas.
Israel is presently starving a large city full of people under the pretense of forcing them to leave knowing that can't do so. Starving people isn't morally different than herding them all into gas chambers.
If there is a place that needs immediate intervention it is using force to enforce peace in Gaza before all the remaining people in Gaza die.
Amnesty international emitted report that say "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed":
> As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.
Somehow people cite it as a proof of genocide.
BBC has produced a documentary with narrator being son of Hamas official, and were forced to apologize for that [1]. They sheleved another documentary with impartiality concerns. They have contributors calling to "burn Jews like Hitler" [2].
So yeah, there are unbiased critics of Israel, just none of those you listed
[1] https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/statements/gaza-how-to-survi...
[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/26/well-burn-jews-l...
Source? Perhaps older report, before the country dropped any pretense of respecting international norms on human rights. Today Amnesty sees a clear case of genocide underway against indigenous palestinians in Gaza. See https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-inter...
> 5.5.2 STATE INTENT The jurisprudence on genocidal intent on the part of a state is more limited. The ICJ has accepted that, in the absence of direct proof, specific intent may be established indirectly by inference for purposes of state responsibility, and has adopted much of the reasoning of the international tribunals.380 However, its rulings on inferring intent can be read extremely narrowly, in a manner that would potentially preclude a state from having genocidal intent alongside one or more additional motives or goals in relation to the conduct of its military operations. As outlined below, Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict. The organization considers that the Genocide Convention must be interpreted in a manner that ensures that genocide remains prohibited in both peacetime and in war and that ICJ jurisprudence should not be read to effectively preclude a finding of genocide during war.
Regarding state intent, it appears this means that Amnesty is just remarking that a state can't launder genocide intent by parallel constructing additional motives or goals that are legitimate sounding.
So that does not support your conclusion that "Israel is not commiting genocide according to existing definitions, thus definitions should be changed". Alas, the text is misquoted, as it doesn't appear anywhere in the document. Those are not Amnesty words, neither the text actually in the report supports it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre
Hamas recruits among civilians. Radicalized civilians. And Israel has just radicalized even more Palestinians, creating even better recruiting ground for Hamas.
Israel has supported Hamas because it's a very convenient enemy for them. Hamas wants to wipe Israel from the map, and to Israel, that means a powerful Hamas controlling Palestine justifies their wiping Palestine off the map.
During the 1980s, when the PLO was the dominant force in Palestine and wanted a two-state solution, Israel supported the much less influential Hamas in order to undermine PLO's position. And I think in 2017, Israel asked Qatar to support Hamas.
Note that the Netanyahu government only goes after the people on the ground, not the leadership abroad. And they clearly have no problem killing and radicalizing more Palestinian civilians.
You have got that the other way around. Hamas was founded in 1987 during the Intifada, before the PLO started supporting a two state solution in 1988. The reason the PLO made that shift was that it was in exile and a new leadership in Palestine was formed (including Hamas), and they were afraid they will lose relevancy.
In 1987 and going forward Hamas fought Israel, so claiming Israel supported it is paradoxical.
Qatari money was transferred to Hamas prior to any Israeli involvement as early as 2007, sometimes in cash through the tunnels.
In 2017 the Palestinian Authority refused to transfer taxes collected to the Hamas Gaza government or pay Israel for Gaza's electricity, leading to an economical downturn in Gaza.
Because of the pending humanitarian crisis that would probably end in starvation due to Gaza less than stellar economy, whose blame would be put on Israel as is accustomed, Qatar was used as a lesser evil solution. It allowed Israel not to directly fund the Hamas government, which except for its military wing, is also its schools, hospitals, municipal and all other civilians functions.
The narrative you are repeating also repeats itself as Israel created Hezbollah or even as far as the US created ISIS, 9/11 was an inside job etc
The source of this narrative in my opinion is the old racist imperialist narrative where the so-called natives are merely children incapable of agency. Here in the post colonialist sense, if there is any evil actor around, its actions or mere existence must quickly be attributed to the West/Israel, or else cognitive dissonance abounds
Israel says it killed Iran's military co-ordinator with Hamas - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9yxrxwzzzo
When Hamas brought cars with naked and unconscious/dead Israeli women back into Gaza, mobs of cheering Palestinians formed to spit on the women and hit them with their shoes.
That is how they behaved before the Israeli response has a chance to radicalize them. There's nothing Israel can do to radicalize them further, it can only use force to contain them.
You… you think that was the start of the process?
What other country is attacking or has attacked its neighbors as Israel has? What other country has been executing a live-streamed genocide that you can see the outcomes of on Instagram?
Just yesterday I saw a video of a mother comforting her infant whose leg was blown off by Israeli bombs. And yet these religious fanatics are the ones we call our “allies”.
This statement is so laughably ignorant of the modern history of the Middle East that I cannot believe it is not satire.
How many countries has Israel attacked in last year alone?
Israel has pro-actively invaded one country ever (Egypt because the 6 day war was coming). Spinning Israel as a colonist is historically crazy as theyve ceded more land than theyve picked up.
I’m not even going to bring up the thousands of Palestinians Israel has arrested and kept in prison for the crime of being Palestinian…
Edit: oh your Israeli rofl that checks out
what do you mean by this? that there is no Hamas, or that they aren't embedded amongst civilians, or something else?
There is no Hamas and if there is there’s barely any
israel is instead making up its own hamas, and then bombing the food aid to target the civilians.
Exactly who is the Dragon here? You think Israel’s bloodlust is done with Iran? They want much more Territory across the Middle East. They are occupying parts of Cypress right now, And have craving for parts of Egypt and more.
What we cannot tolerate anymore is the violence of the Israeli state. It has become the monster.
It's a weird one. I don't disagree with your post, still, what is "approved" nukes? A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them. Then Israel also got them, also "unauthorized", but countries who don't mind pretend they don't know.
In the end there is no authorized and unauthorized nukes, only a calculus of power.
1. Check this list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we...
2. Cross out the countries which are attacked for having nuclear weapons.
Here's your definition of approved nukes.
Russia attacked ukraine because they didn't. Iran got attacked because it didn't. North korea isnt attacked because they have. That's the moral of the story.
It's "make nukes first, ask questions later"
This seems analogous to the idea that every household should have guns if they want to be safe.
Going with your analogy, this would be the same as if police basically ignored all home invasion/trespassing laws such that the only houses that criminals entered were in fact those of undefended home owners. In this scenario, it would be demonstrated, by this policy, that yes home owners need to own guns to be safe.
To your point, if you don't want a world where it's safer for home owners to own guns, than you need to ensure there are policies in place to create a world where that was true. The lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that, if you don't have nuclear weapons, your sovereignty is always at the mercy of nations that do.
A world where every country needs nuclear weapons to remain sovereign is similarly undesirable (on a larger scale) to a country where every home needs to have guns to be safe. However we're on a path with nuclear weapons where that is unfortunately not the reality we are creating.
Relations between sovereign states are fundamentally anarchic. There are no world police. The UN and other international institutions have little or no real power, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty is only enforceable through kinetic action by other countries when it suits their interests.
But if law enforcement is not only not doing their job but actively threatening you: well, I guess 2A won this time.
Turns out, making yourself a more dangerous target works to an extent.
Putting aside ICE tactics, if their immigration status is not legal, then by definition they are not law abiding citizens.
Unless you are privy the status of any planned or ongoing ICE operations against criminals, you have no idea what they are doing in that regard.
Law enforcement at all levels needs checks along with better direction in carrying out their duties. However, allowing people to continue living in an immigration limbo is not a solution. Sanctuary cities leave illegal immigrants unprotected.
That's a lie. They broke the law when they entered the country illegally. Then some of them committed more crimes.
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
You know because it’s hard to make a case about being a country of rights, due process, law and order if you don’t extend that to the people within it’s borders.
The blue cities are enforcing the Constitution as sanctuary cities are legal laws of those states. The red states and federal government are violating it.
There’s a supremacy clause, and it’s quite clear.
In most case, it is the same countries that give adequate training to their cops, a not-so-surprising correlation.
When it's rare, then it's easy and reasonable to take a highly idealistic approach. When it's frequent you have to deal with uncomfortable practical issues like whether an officer should prioritize your survival, or their own. There's a line where heroics turn into suicidality, and that's largely driven by frequency.
And furthermore most gun crime is committed by people who do not legally own the firearm being used. [2] I'm loathe to link to that site, but this is an issue that is poorly reported and so it requires exploring a web of data sources, which they actually competently do, on this issue at least.
You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.
[1] - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...
[2] - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/12/john-faso/...
You should take a refresher on statistics and the difference between correlated and causative
And why a divorced guy living in his house be an issue with your friends or neighbors?
Why is “divorced” relevant. Maybe he should be the one worried about NIMBYs.
I made a profile of a person that fits the profile of somebody that might be a little angry at society. Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.
For what its worth, there are plenty of guys I know who are divorced, and it was probably the right decision, and they're great people. Most marriages end that way, in fact. It doesn't mean the "divorced jaded man who lost his social place in the world, struggles to find kindness or peers, and lashes out" is a stock character that will go away. It's a real problem
Oh god… please fix me.
Anyways it read to me like an obvious generalization. My bad if you weren’t. After all, some of your best friends are “x”.
Problem is it is impossible to combine: - responsible storage of firearms - immediate availability of firearms anywhere at home when faced with hostility
Also most gun violence is domestic so having firearms at home do not solve a problem but creates it.
That said: lock up your guns. Your mid will probably survive a stove burn.
Curiosity is the number one problem with kids and guns, and that's because we hide them behind a mystique and don't make them understand. But talk to any redneck kid, and guns aren't a big deal, because they've had the mystique removed through education and familiarity.
We’ve seen the footage of the police brutalizing peaceful protestors beating them with clubs, riding over them repeatedly with horses.
The police in this country are woefully undertrained compared to the rest of the industrialized nations.
It takes more time and training to be certified as a hairdresser in most parts of the US than it does a cop.
What is "the police" on the level of countries? There is no majority that agrees that, e. g., the NATO can serve as the police. It feels like on this level, we live in an anarchy with only very few actors who don't really want to live together. So maybe nukes are an option, although I don't like it.
A safe community isn’t one where people are held in check by police. People are not roving around thinking “oh I’d break and enter and murder and rape but for the fact a police officer might shoot me.”
People in such a community lack guns but they do have things like a working public health system, decent education, daily encounters with other people that are positive and so on.
The threat of police shootings is not what makes a safe society safe.
Constructive, open and fair trade is the equivalent at an international level. Cooperative and trusting. Not staring down the barrel of each other’s guns.
That's also not necessarily the point I'm making. Suppose you are in a society where a small part of people are bad actors, for whatever reason. They will break and enter, murder, and rape. You want to protect the rest of the society against these bad actors. You can now equip everyone with weapons so they may defend themselves. That also enables the bad actors to use said weapons because we don't know who really know who is a bad actor (at least not the ones that didn't commit any crimes yet). Or you give weapons only to a small part of society, where you enforce strict gun laws.
The alternative is to reduce the number of bad actors and this is, in part, fulfilled by the conditions that you are describing. But how do I reduce the number of state leaders that are willing to shoot each other? I guess it's what you are saying, namely constructive, open, and fair trade. But we're not really making progress in that direction it seems.
Except this isn't borne out in the data. Look at deeply conservative places where guns are literally everywhere, and you'll see very low crime rates compared to cities with strict gun control.
And why? Well, as a criminal, I'd be loathe to try something when there's a good chance the victim is armed.
In your perfect community scenario, a single armed criminal would wreak havoc, completely unopposed.
Source: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.3040...
[1] - https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...
Why do Canada and Europe have dramatically lower violent crime rates despite having a mostly unarmed population?
Grew up rural Alberta with rifles around the house all the time, in plain view. For shooting game. Not a word was ever uttered about "defending ourselves" with guns... From who?
Hell, we left our door unlocked when we left the house unless it was overnight.
Good grief. Nothing is sadder than people valorizing social/cultural breakdown.
"Peace, order, and good government."
I don't lock my house or my car habitually, never had a problem, never felt the need to keep a weapon either, but I know plenty of people that live in the city that have been robbed or assaulted and do feel the need to carry though. I can't really blame them for not relying on police.
You're naive. The police (or whatever you call it) is meant for inward force projection of the state. Your security is not the main concern.
Besides the police works too slowly to truly protect you when SHTF. Sometimes even a minute or two is the difference between you being alive or dead.
I was once involved with a project that returned determination of land ownership from people's physical custody to the courts and the resulting drops in assault and homicide rates (for the entire country) was in the double digits over a period of months.
This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home. I'm countries with virtually no private ownership of guns, it is extraordinarily unlikely to be in life threatening danger in your home.
> This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home
Citation needed, because I highly doubt you're correct.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_re...
I think a part of the reason North Korea plays crazy is because they have to. If the US didn't think they'd push the big red button, then we'd invade them in a heart-beat. Mutually assured destruction only works when you believe the other guy will push the button. So you need the bomb and then you also need to make sure everybody thinks you're willing to actually use it.
North Korea has enough conventional rocket artillery within range of Seoul to level the city. This is how Kim was able to run his nuclear program to completion in the first place. It also hasn't changed.
Let's hope NATO doesn't get compromised, else I see 30 new nuclear programs starting soon.
We all hooray (well, some of us) the "good" countries having nukes, to bring peace and stability. But it only takes one funky election to get a crazy person in charge of such "good" nukes. And if you 10x the number of nuclear powers, that's 10x more shots at that.
Also, you probably mean "unleash".
I do disagree with your premise that Gaddafi’s death was a natural consequence of the Western intervention. Whilst watching the events unfold at the time, I’d say he would be ousted and killed irrespectively of any intervention — either by the populace or by the various factions vying for power.
I don't intend this as a drive-by zinger, far from it, but I think you're being hopelessly optimistic. Every country with the science and engineering muscle to make it happen will be pursuing a nuclear program. NATO, former Warsaw Pact, some assholes who managed to cobble together a broadly recognized country by virtue of force of will, you name it. They're all going to be seeking to create nuclear weapons.
Seoul is in artillery range of the border.
How do you explain India vs Pakistan?
What was this, then?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_co...
ukraine is what a war looks like when both parties dont have nukes
I mean israel gets attacked even though they have nukes, but some rockets are not the same as a regime-changing war
Your original point was that nukes prevented attacks. India vs Pakistan rejects your hypothesis.
You then proceeded to move the goalpost from "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" to "yeah countries with nukes get attacked, but attacks don't escalate" which is also an absurd argument to make.
It's a particularly silly point to make in light of India Vs Pakistan because it was described as an electoral stunt to save face, which means nuclear nations still attack themselves even for the flimsiest reasons.
It's not. the world is not a binary system to make simplistic black/white arguments. Nukes certainly act as deterrent for escalating a war. yes , attacks will exist , but we are not escalating with russia for a reason. you are being pedantic , but the argument for deterrence still stands strong.
I agree, simplistic comments on the line of "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" are silly and don't pass the smell test. Don't you agree?
What I’m saying precisely is that quite often things will appear to be one way for a long time even if the underlying premise is wrong. E.g. the chicken who thinks the farmer is nice because the farmer feeds, houses, and provides safety until the inevitable untimely end for the chicken.
Similar situations which are assumed to be impossible have risks pushed right up to the edge until it becomes inevitable. Sure Pakistan and India narrowly averted this time but what if they didn’t. Take for example the concept that US housing market couldn’t crash simultaneously across the US, this enabled cheap debt which pushed the market to the edge until one day it went over the edge.
There is additionally the problem of victory disease, it looks like you’re winning right up until you fail.
There is a survivability bias, we wouldn’t be discussing the viability of MAD had it not worked out thus far.
If Iran gets a nuclear weapon they’ll be able to avoid being invaded while being able to constantly needle Israel, to the point the survival of Israel would be at stake. Similar to how Israel is needling Iran now but with proxies. At that point Israel must make a choice, peacefully collapse or escalate and I’m confident they’ll escalate. I don’t think it’s a question of if but a question of when, once the threshold has been crossed the once unthinkable becomes routine.
Additionally the inaction of a strong adversary is often seen incorrectly as sign of weakness, but it is the cornered rats that lashes out. We can cross Russia’s and Chinas red lines all day every day, right up until they think they’re a cornered rat and then we can’t. How confident can we really be that we know exactly where that limit is. Because the bellicose are more often promoted the people marking these assessments are more likely to have an overly optimistic on the location of that limit. It appears to me China and Russia have a wait and see approach to the US which appears to be in terminal decline, and yet again the west is taking that as a sign of weakness.
When you have morons in charge not even MAD can save you.
If you enter into a scenario against a nuclear opponent where they go nuclear (which you going nuclear would certainly do) then you may well defeat them, but they're simultaneously also defeat you. This is a big part of the reason that Russia is so paranoid about the US surrounding it with military bases. The only possible way to treat to sidestep this problem is with a massive decapitation strike where you try to nuke your enemy into oblivion before they have any chance to respond with their own nukes. Realistically, it's probably impossible, but but it remains the Achille's Heel of MAD / mutually assured destruction. And drones/internal strike issues are certainly going to be causing some consternation.
Well, there's also missile defense, but I think that's a dead end. We're talking about the offensive goal being to shoot a bullet at the side of a massive barn, and the defensive goal being to shoot down that bullet. It seems impossible to imagine a state of technology between near peers where the latter becomes easier than the former.
But let me put it in familiar worlds from pop culture:
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
(Because Iran doesn't have nukes, it's currently being forced into playing and making losing moves.)
(Probably the risk to S. Korea, and the risk of pulling China into a war.)
Regarding guns: if you have easy access to weapons, everyone also has access, so the Nash equilibrium is "get a weapon". If weapons circulation is restricted, the Nash equilibrium is "don't waste your money on weapons".
Iraq also attacked an allegedly nuclear capable Israel without fear of a nuclear reprisal.
Please give dates, locations, and number of casualties. Iran has made many aggressive statements and funded and armed Palestinian resistance organizations, but actual conflict between Israel and Iran has been mostly clandestine and not officially acknowledged, with a few exceptions where Israel and the US unilaterally attack Iran.
However, we don't live in a reasonable world, so I suspect the first step will be, as much as I don't want it, World War III.
There was a hope that once they acquired nuclear weapons, rogue countries would become responsible, because they didn't need to worry about their own existence. Pakistan has proven this theory wrong, sponsoring terrorism in in its neighbouring countries and abroad while being immune from the consequences.
Yes, tell me more about the US please
I think all current nuclear-weapon states would very much care, because it diminishes their status. Also Switzerland or Brasil would be breaking the Non-Proliferation Treaty which would make even more countries and the UN and IAEA care.
Israel is not a singer of the treaty.
Invasion of Afghanistan only happened after diplomatic efforts to get the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden. Iraq invasion was pushed through UN. Likewise, the Balkan war in 1990s was UN-sanctioned.
This? I mean, never mind the question of nukes, I don't think anyone declared war. Iran is a buffet of pick-your-own-target, in the middle of a negotiation that was supposed to end the nuclear program peacefully. I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it. It's a step back from a world, where at least in theory we were supposed to stay within the frameworks of principle-based laws.
You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it. Maybe. But I'd like to think it set a limit to how far they can bend it. Now? I'm not so sure.
Democracy doesn't really work when people think the US invaded Vietnam attacked they attacked us, that the US invaded Iraq because they have or are building WMD, that we invaded Libya to "liberate" it, and so on. And as for Iran, here's [2] a montage of Netanyahu claiming Iran will imminently have nuclear weapons, and so they should be invaded. The claims started 30 years ago and generally had a timeline of 1-3 years at most.
If the justifications for wars were more honest, even if that entails completely dropping the facade of morality, it'd have enabled populations within countries to have a better understanding of how the world "really" works, and also to make better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzmtdwsef8s
I recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/United-Nations-History-Stanley-Meisle...
The UN isn't working very well right now, but it's worked considerably better in the past. In the wake of WW2, I think there was a genuine sentiment that war was really horrible and it should be avoided at all costs. Sadly most of the people who saw WW2 have passed away by this point.
In terms of populations "making better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support" -- I think international law is, if anything, helpful in this regard. Foreign policy is complex, and human nature is such that people are always predisposed to see their own interests as just, or at least cloak their interests in the language of justice. On the other hand, total pacifism is also ideologically unworkable for various reasons. (Even most leftists are against "America First" style isolationism for WW2 or Ukraine.) So international law is valuable in the sense that, at least in principle, it helps you figure out who the bad guy is: Who is breaking international law? That may sound rather academic, but in practice it seems to carry more weight than you might expect.
To state my position another way: I think having some sort of international law is a good idea, even if the current scheme needs to be reworked. A better scheme might be: Have some ritualized, non-lethal way for nations to test strength against each other, e.g. through athletic competitions or wargames, as a binding method of resolving disagreements. This could be game-theoretically stable, if success at the "ritual test of strength" is thought to correlate strongly with real-world war performance. Furthermore, any state which initiates lethal, kinetic confrontation after losing the "ritual test of strength" (sore losers who refuse to abide by the outcome) should become international pariahs subject to secondary sanctions.
Well, sort of. They tried, but when the UN gave an answer that the US and UK didn't like, they went ahead anyway.
> You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it.
I'm not quite cynical enough to wholly agree with that, but given enough motivation and power the façade does crack pretty easily.
Well, Iran has been funding armies to the tune of millions (billions?) of dollars to attack Israel, as well as funding multiple terror attacks against Jews and against the US for many years.
So, alternative view - the fact that Iran has been allowed to do this, while the entire time stating quite clearly that they intend to destroy another sovereign country, while at the same time develop most of what they need for nukes - the fact that they've been allowed to do all this is actually proof that countries can do whatever they want and get away with it. And stopping their program is actually a way to show that countries can't just get away with it.
I'd love to see a UN resolution calling for the dismantling for this terrorist network. Or if not that, at least some kind of multilateral, or even hell, unilateral declaration on this - "end this or else". But no, it's a western style drive-by shooting. It just so happens the guy who got shot is a baddie.
It also flies in the face of anyone with general knowledge:
Two of Iran's main proxies are Hamas, that has been shooting rockets at Israel for the last 15 years, and launched a major invasion planned (in their mind) to destroy Israel?
And Hezbollah, which fought multiple wars with Israel, also launched hundreds of rockets at Israel since the Gaza war began, and had thousands of rockets aimed at Israel, as well as tens of thousand of ground troops hidden in caves and tunnels on the border of Israel, with plans to launch an invasion into Israel?
This is all on top of the Iranian regime saying over and over again that one of their goals is to destroy Israel?
The Iran-Iraq war was the first one, with Iraq funded and supported by the Gulf states.
Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is strategic in this context. The Saudi regime wants rapprochement with Israel and to remain aligned with US interests. But neither of these are remotely popular in the Saudi population. By funding guerrilla warfare against Israel, Iran and to a lesser extent Qatar, keeps the Sauds discredited and unpopular among at home and in other Arab countries. The same applies to Egypt, another regional rival of Iran, whose government have never been off the defensive with the Egyptian people and wider Arab opinion since normalisation with Israel.
Obviously Hamas and Hezbollah themselves are only interested in fighting Israel and not the wider regional conflicts. But Iran itself uses that conflict, quite cynically, for wider geopolitical goals. Its stance is the reason that, from Afghanistan to Turkey to Tunisia, it can always find allies who want to challenge the Gulf states vision for the Middle East. Iran supplies the weapons and the know how, but there's never a shortage of locals to drive the car bombs.
There is an interpretation of Iran's behaviour which sees it as a source of Muslim pride for standing up to imperialism, and suggests in contrast that the Saudi leaders are too decadent, too corrupt, and bring shame by ignoring injustice and exploitation done to Arabs. I would certainly question this, but it's not an unpopular discourse in Saudi and other Arab countries.
If you have never come across the idea of the conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine etc being part of a long game of proxy war and influence between Iran and Saudi, I would question how broad your sources of analysis are.
Still, I think you (or austin-cheney) go way too far in seemingly completely dismissing the idea that the proxies are to fight Israel. Yes, there are a lot of larger strategic implications here, and yes, this is sometimes seen as part of Iran positioning itself as the leader of the Muslim nation that will restore honor to Islam, etc.
But "Israel just happened to be there and frequently get in the way when not directly intervening." doesn't make much sense, given the consistent statements of Iran for the last 40 years, given the fact that they're pouring so much of this funding into Hamas and Hezbollah which, as you say, are only interested in fighting Israel themselves.
(Btw, in some sense, Israel is probably the most powerful regional power in the Middle East.)
In any case, none of this makes my original point "nonsense". The point that it's Iran that's disrupting the rules-based order, not the US, still stands, even if the proxy wars were not "really" to destroy Israel (most evidence to the contrary) and even if it's only funding these proxies which have spread terror and war in the region to try and destabilize Saudi Arabia.
Would you at least agree that yours is at the very least far from a mainstream opinion? I feel like you at least need to back it up with some evidence given that.
For the record, I have no formal expertise in anything related to this. I do live in Israel, have been living through the bombing campaigns, invasions etc of Iran's proxies for most of my life. The country that just "happened to be in the way".
Except in the case of Hezbollah (first Google result for "why was Hezbollah founded": "Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon."). And except in the case of Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, on the border of Israel. This is the first time I've ever heard Hamas referred to as not mainly having to do with Israel, but with Saudi Arabia.
(In any case, differences in opinion aside, thank you for your service!)
So, are you saying the US must go war with Iran now because Hezbollah was founded 43 years ago and does not like Israel?
You are doing a really bad job of presenting anything coherent.
No, I didn't say that, and I'm not sure why you're switching to talk about this.
I was specifically refuting this idea from the GP of this thread:
> Sort of. I think there was an effort to put a rules-based framework, still skewed towards the "great powers", but a framework nonetheless.
This and other parts of that comment implied that, up until now, there was a rules-based order, but this attack somehow goes against that.
I was pointing out that this doesn't make much sense to me, because Iran has been breaking that rules-based order for years and getting away with it. Saying that enforcing the order is the problem, and not the attempt to circumvent it, is IMO incorrect.
You're free to correct me on that idea if you disagree, it's certainly a debatable opinion. But the only thing you disagreed with me on (or at least the thing you called out) was that Iran wasn't funding proxies against Israel, it was to contain Saudi Arabia. That, unlike my alternative view of what the war signifies, is something that is at odds with reality.
No.
Your parent is figuratively flying in the face of …
I have five figures of karma with which to fight this battle…
Hezbollah is not Iran. Israel has gone to war with Hezbollah in the past completely without military intervention from Iran.
In general many sanctions around nukes are based on many many treaties and the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs. [2]
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferat...
[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_disarmament
>> A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them.
you're both correct.
Also note the Iranian monarchy signed the NPT in 1970, while the Iranian Revolution was in 1979. When your national origin story is built on the illegitimacy of the previous government, why would you consider yourself to be constrained by the actions of your illegitimate parents?
When the west has had such overthrows, we've tended to declare the acts of the previous administration null-and-void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_9_August_1944
Not saying the current Iranian government is good, just acknowledging that legitimacy is determined by the victors, and the current regime has been victorious over the previous, just as last night's B2's were victorious against the air defenses. Might makes right, morality is increasingly a propaganda story, and history really is written by the victors.
If a mafia boss defines anything he gets away with as legal, that's not aligned with what we commonly think of as legal justice and thus a pointless distinction.
So I've made peace with mafia boss power politics keeping the number of countries with nuclear weapons on the low end of the spectrum, and for that matter I'd support a much more aggressive approach to that end than we have seen these last 30 years.
As challenging as it sounds, we need to develop a strong impartial international institution whose the only mission would be maintaining peace and preventing wars on the planet. This should be the only entity that's approved to have nuclear weapons.
The scenario you concocted here is Disneyland. It’s not just challenging, it’s just an oppressive version of the UN, but it won’t be impartial because it will be the most powerful organization on the planet and a target for every extremist and ideologue that seeks to acquire power. You haven’t changed the game, you’ve temporarily changed the battlefield.
This speaks like someone who has never been outside of a heavily bureaucratized regime. People don't get "approval" for things, they just do them.
The contradiction is that by relying on militarism instead of diplomacy we keep demonstrating that countries are safer from aggression once they have the bomb. You think the situation you’ve described provides a negative incentive for nuclear development, but it does not.
Or maybe that is the wrong approach, but the policy we've had that let North Korea develop nukes and Iran at least get very close also isn't working.
Iran is more straightforward. I don't know why we've been so reluctant to make real diplomatic effort, especially after so many of Iran's proxies were significantly weakened in the last year or two, and Iran's sway was at a minimum. There seems to be an unwritten rule that once we've categorized a country as an enemy we're obligated to deal with them in the dumbest ways imaginable.
Agreed. Let's start with US and Russia first.
It’s not that people were just too dumb or too scared to do something about it.
Didn't Netanyahu perjure himself to congress about iraq's wmds two decades? Isn't that grounds for arrest? It's amazing how our media never mentions that netanyahu is a habitual liar when they push netanyahu's iran's wmds spiel.
At this point our media companies are israel's PR department. Fox news should be banned like RT for being a foreign mouthpiece.
You forget that it is also US state media. Republicans would be banning their own version of RT.
You can believe Fox News is the worst entity in human history, but Fox News is not RT.
Maybe, but worth saying the ICC have issued a warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes. The reason he hasn't been arrested is:
- The ICC is just a court, not a police department. Only countries have those, and while Netanyahu is in Israel, his own police probably won't arrest him.
- Authoritarian governments like Trump, Orban, Putin are actively undermining the ICC, which makes enforcement even less likely.
It's not just a Trump thing.
In 2002 on the heels of 9/11 George W Bush signed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_... into law, also known as Hague Invasion Act, specifically acknowledging the ICC in the clearest of ways.
How is that relevant? Is an elected judiciary demonstrably more objective at interpreting law?
Seriously, though. There are thousands of tin-pot dictators who would love to remake the world in their image. None of them have the ability to do so, including Iran. What makes this one special? Other than it being a very convenient target in a news cycle with some very inconvenient stories?
then again if your username is accurate, there's no point
With these strikes, it seems more like Israel has ample intelligence on the US government than it has on the Middle East, since even DNI concurred that there was no proof of WMDs.
It was ginned up BS that led to the worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years, directly creating ISIS, deaths of 500k Iraqis and kicking off the migrant crisis.
> It was ginned up BS
This is just not true. You can view the documents on wikileaks and other organizations.
> that led to the worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years, directly creating ISIS, deaths of 500k Iraqis and kicking off the migrant crisis.
Perhaps, but completely irrelevant to whether or not they had WMD.
I don't get why people who are on the right side of this refuse to admit this.
What are these documents you are referring to?
Some of the chemicals qualified as WMD. Almost none of them were properly stored and weren't usable, but a little bit were usable.
Also, I'm not making the claim they were trying to make new ones, just that they had some.
It was about ongoing programs, including a whole bunch of horse droppings about yellowcake uranium enrichment.
Pedantically saying but there were some old shells of gas misses the entire point.
The US ginned up a war on false pretenses, leading to millions dying.
Your um actually on some trivia ain't helpful or interesting
I don't get why people who are so opposed to the war are the ones who can't admit they actually did have WMD. Making these false claims just makes it look like we, who were opposed to the war, are the liars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
> U.S.-led inspections later found that Iraq had ceased active WMD production and stockpiling.
The article says an awful lot more, such as pointing out the fact that Saddam's regime not only ran WMD development programmes for decades but also had a long and verified track record of using them in military engagements and even against civilians.
The article also points out the fact that once Saddam's regime was defeated in it's botched attempt at invading and annexing Kuwait, it rejected and outright antagonized the UN's programme that foresaw terminating Saddam's WMD programmes.
Trying to spin the issue as a simplistic "they had no WMDs" is ignorant to the point of being nearly disingenuous. You need to ignore everything and the whole history to make such a simplistic and superficial observation.
It's not s problem at all. It's actually the whole point.
Following Saddam's botched invasion of Kuwait, the regime was ordered to destroy it's WMD stockpile. The UN was mandated to foresee Saddam's WMD programmes were destroyed. Saddam spent the following years outright preventing the UN to do any form of verification, and went to the extent of outright antagonizing them.
So you reach a point where a totalitarian regime with a long and proven track record of developing and using WMDs refuses to show it got rid of it's WMDs. How can you tell if they still have it if they actively prevent the UN from checking?
You instead receive intel that suggests Saddam is indeed not only stockpiling WMDs but also actively developing them.
Do you think it's unreasonable to enforce the decision?
It's tempting to look back and take the simplistic and ignorant path of saying "there were no WMDs". This however denies all facts and state of affairs. In fact, the whole WMD talk is a red herring.
It was with this backdrop that the "Iraq has WMDs" campaign managed to get traction. If you learn history and pay attention to the events, you'll quickly understand that Saddam's antagonism and mockery of the whole UN institution, specially when they self-isolated, was an easy sell even with weak evidence.
Making this out to be a simple matter exclusively and bounded to the existence of WMDs is naive and outright ignorant.
[0] https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2019/04/five-...
We couldn’t stop North Korea with threats of violence but we did manage to stop Iran for almost 50 years through diplomacy. That’s all pissed down the drain now.
Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia after the collapse of the USSR with a treaty-promise that Russia will never be an aggressor.
Iran has now been bombed into regime change for trying to even get to that point.
If there's one thing every 2-bit aspiring dictator now knows, it's the only way to protect yourself is to get nukes.
This wasn't a non-proliferation enforcement action, this was the nail in the coffin of all future non-proliferation efforts.
Now we have regime change and Libya is a paradise. /s
One of the problems with all of this is we may hate the government, but in getting rid of it we don't get anything better.
They have consistently and openly threatened US leaders.
There was no diplomacy here.
"The last 50 years", you say? Oh, so right around the time when the US and Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister to install a religious nutcase, because that nutcase would agree to sell them oil at a better price?
No, can't imagine that causing any bitterness.
We reaped what we sowed with Iran.
North Korea is poised to level Seoul with conventional rocket artillery. A military solution has never been an option. Threats of violence in Korea are transparent.
Yes, we stopped them. How many nuclear weapons does Iran possess today? 0? Despite having a vast, VAST head start on North Korea - like decades worth of experience and capabilities. The ONLY reason they don't have one today is the diplomacy that convinced them to not move forward faster.
>How many countries don’t have nukes that aren’t being invaded. Canada, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica etc.
I think my favorite part is when the first country on your list is one who has been threatened repeatedly by the current US administration.
What exactly do you think Canada is going to do should Trump decide to follow-through on his threats of making them the 51st state? Make some strongly worded notices of condemnation with the UN while Ottawa is being razed?
Costa Rica has nothing anybody wants. If the US tomorrow declared they are no longer protecting Japan, they would likley find themselves invaded by Japan before the end of the year. The only reason Italy is safe is because they're part of the EU, and the EU has... you guessed it... access to nuclear weapons.
Yet, if they had moved faster, force would've been used to stop them earlier.
If force alone could stop a nuclear program, why does North Korea have bombs? Many nations could have attacked them without any concerns of recourse for decades.
If the regime survives, now Iranian people have a very good reasons to ignore its shortcomings and tyranny and Do a proper sacrifice. It’s a natural resources rich nation of 90 million people. If they want to get serious, they can get serious.
More to it, I've had personal experience with this brutal regime, they arrested my old cousin during the Mahsa Protests(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests), she was taken to the Evin prison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison) and was tortured for 6 months. We had no news from her. When she was finally released, she was so skinny that you could see her rib bones. We managed to bring her to Canada and it took her over a year of medical care until she began to recover. She was only 20.
No one hates this regime more than Iranians.
With all that out of the way, Iranians have no choice now but the defend their homes against hostile forces. They will not simply sit back and watch Israel and United States bomb their land to oblivion and then demand unconditional surrender.
This attack will inflict more pain on Iranians and only serves to grow the regime stronger.
We wanted a regime change, but not at the hands of Israel and US.
Honest question, do Iranians want foreign help for regime change? If so, what would be the nature of this help?
I cannot. Ground occupation, yes. But afaict bombing just reinforces the regime.
The Iranian regime is very centralized and with Israel and the USA having air superiority and having penetrated it completely from an intelligence perspective (see Israel's perfect knowledge of the whereabouts of the previous chief of staff and the newly appointed chief of staff) it's going to be very hard for it to survive if a decision is made to remove it. There are a handful of key people that once gone there is not going to be any continuity.
The current regime is allowed to continue because of fear of chaos if it is removed, not because there isn't a capability to remove it.
Again, no bombing campaigns led to a change of regime. This theory is proven again and again
Regardless, a sovereign country was bombed tonight just because they can. This, IMHO, can have very bad outcomes for the peace worldwide since it means that anybody who can bomb someone can just go ahead and do it. No more international order.
What's next then? Bomb Brussels because EU doesn't buy chicken from USA? This stuff isn't OK.
The regime change in Iran can be a silver lining if it changes with something more cooperative. But yes, I agree that this is unlikely.
From what I gathered from OSINT types, they have breached the ventilation shafts above the centrifuge halls
The dictatorial nature of Trump's order to attack a nation is far more concerning. Supposedly the US requires an act of Congress to authorize this sort of operation. Sidestepping congress underlines US's descent into totalitarianism and one of the very first acts crystalizing a dictatorship.
This president has clearly exposed the unarticulated parts of out laws which is supposed to make them work; The hope that the president will essentially act and interpret them in “good faith”
not doing so is approval of the change in the president's power to initiate and wage war unilaterally without congressional involvement
IRGC isn’t a sovereign country, it’s a designated terrorist organization
You forgot that IRGC already directly attacked Israel twice in 2024 [1,2], and that’s not including countless proxy attacks and terrorist acts, culminating in October 7th massacres & atrocities
You got it wrong: IRGC attacked and Israel retaliated
US is just helped a little bit their ally
> This stuff isn't OK.
UN, ICC, ICG, etc. all became a $hit show, they don’t work. For 40 years IRGC threatened with Genocide of Jews, and they did nothing. Now when Jews retaliated: * This stuff isn't OK.* ;)
—-
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes...
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2024_Iranian_strikes_o...
or
De facto vs de jure
Pedantic rule-based systems are easy to circumvent with loopholes and lacunas. That’s why we should look at the substance and not merely a [legal] form
Examples:
- form: a cryptocurrency, but substance: an unregistered security
- “medical alcohol” during dry laws / Prohibition
- “medical marijuana” & patients vs drug users
- etc.
—-
Was Third Reich[1] a “sovereign government” or a front for The National Socialist German Workers' Party?
Was USSR a “sovereign government” or a front for a Communist Party?
Is Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) a “sovereign government” or merely a front for IRGC[2]?
And wasn’t Iran/Persia already a “sovereign government” before IRGC staged a coup d'état (aka “revolution”)?
—-
> "De facto" and "de jure" are Latin terms used to distinguish between what exists in reality and what is legally recognized. "De facto" refers to something that exists in practice or reality, even if not officially established or legally recognized. "De jure" refers to something that is legally recognized or officially established
——
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_...
In the first case, u have 2 more options: strike pre-emptively, or wait for them to strike & then retaliate
It doesn't matter what the entity is, it only matters whether they are enemy or not
——
> So China is not a sovereign state because it is a front for the CPP and can be bombed at will...?
I don't see the logical connection here. I never wrote that countries controlled by terrorist or authoritarian entities should be bombed at will. I wrote that some countries are highjacked by them, & if they attack or declare their intention to attack u, u may as well do it first
The key element is where the will of the people points - Milosevic was already unpopular and the bombing further united the people against him.
The few Iranians I know are against the regime, but I don't know how the wider picture looks.
my experience with Iranians I know are the same. the regime is not partitularly liked by the Iranians but they are no doubt united behind him now because (and for good reason) they likely believe whoever the israelis would appoint as the leader of Iran would be categorically worse.
A lot of Americans deeply oppose Trump, but how many of them would support a Chinese invasion with the express objective of overthrowing him and installing a new regime? I suspect very few, and instead you'd probably get a backlash of support for Trump.
Many of them still look at the Iran-Iraq war with a shade of Iranian patriotism (not sure there's a word to capture that actual feeling of sad memories of losing family members, coupled with a patriotic sense of duty).
The younger generation, not so much, since they didn't have to live through that hell.
Sounds pretty similar to the current situation to me.
Japan.
Perhaps forcing regime changes on other countries shouldn't be a quick decision.
Just recently Trump tried to troll the Germany’s leader for it and only got a “Thank you for defeating us”.
The truth is that Iran’s regime is indeed a very shitty one and a lot of people have grievances with it but the problem is, this is about Israel and they are not any better and didn’t stand at a higher moral ground with their illegal occupation and actions that many consider genocidal.
and a war that killed 400,000 Americans.
You want to repeat that history?
1939, Nazi Germany starts fucking around and nobody does anything about it and then we have WWII on our hands.
You've totally missed the point. It's precisely because we didn't "properly" bomb Germany to stop that first invasion of Poland, that WWII happened and we lost 400,000 Americans, 6 million Jews etc.
* The militarization of the Rhineland in 1936
* The Anschluss with Austria in March 1938
* The annexation of the Sudetenland (and the rest of Czechoslovakia) in October 1938
The German army was weak in the 1930s and his generals very hesitant. Hitler's "reckless" successes gave him credibility and power.
Apparently Hitler was genuinely surprised when the west declared war after the invasion of Poland. He expected the cowardly West to roll over again.
I recommend Childers' "World War II: A Military and Social History" if you're into this kind of thing.
I mean, if we're going to ruminate over alternate timelines why fast forward to the 1930s..?
Furthermore, the foreign policy of the Nazis was informed more by their ideological myths than external events. After all, the Nazis admired the Great Imperialist Powers like the British Empire as part of the "Aryan Race". Their enmity was directed at Eastern Europe and the Communists, which had little to do with the enactment of post-war reparations on Germany.
Well, skip forward in 2023 and here we are again...
https://cherwell.org/2023/05/28/oxford-union-votes-not-to-fi...
Relative to their last, America-backed regime? I don't think you're looking at this from an Iranian perspective at all.
Is there any good reporting out there or sentiment analysis that can show this? Or is it all word of mouth on the Internet? It's okay if there is nothing, but I'd feel a lot better if there was something substantial to back this up too.
This is more likely to be the end of the American empire than an actual change in Iran.
It is also completely unnecessary. There are two options. Either the current regime makes a "deal" or it's going to get crippled to the point of irrelevance or removed.
Iran and Iraq are very different. Different culture, people and history. It's also worth remembering Iran is not homogeneous, only 61% of the population are Persians. There are Azeri, there are Kurds and various other ethnic/region minorities.
Iran is extremely vulnerable. It has internal issues, constantly oppressing/suppressing its people. Its economy is in terrible shape. Most of its economic engine can be easily taken out (its main oil terminals). The bulk of its military can be destroyed from the air, it has little defensive or offensive capability. They know it.
There are much much softer targets than Tel Aviv, many of which Iran has successfully attacked in the past.
The argument that the Iranian people hate their autocratic government might be correct. But a symmetric argument can be made about many of the regimes which work with the United States. No one in those countries is going to war with Iran to defend the US right to have military bases in the Middle East.
If Ramat Gan is not safe, then the UAE's resorts and airports, Saudi's oil processing facilities, the US installations in Iraq and in the Gulf, etc are not even remotely safe.
Israel has taken a lot of damage but relatively little loss of life.
Iran would be foolish to expand the war and they know it. They're not going to attack the UAE or Saudi. Iran's bluff has been called.
from an israeli perspective, things cant be going better. if the US gets pulled into invading iran, then their only effective opponent in the world is vietnam'd. which is great if your soldiers arent the ones dying to IEDs.
without iranian funding/management, Hamas shrivels up and palestine is open to be ethnically cleansed. israel wins a 3000 year old war, and only has to deal with sternly worded letters from the UN for it.
against who? the persians beat the babylonian tyrants and enabled the rebuilding of the temple way back when. Cyrus is a messiah rather than ancient enemy
Say you give the Kurds their own part of Iran and help protect their area could weaken the rest. I think there is already such a deal in in Iraq afaik.
how are you gonna do that without boots on the ground?
Trump talking about annexing canada made them go from being sick of the liberal party becuase of trudeau to swinging back around to supporting it to an upset victory because they were the only ones standing up to america. and thats america's closest ally, iran is their most bitter foe
this is either gonna end any chance of cooling things off with iran (and make them realize they need a nuclear deterrent yesterday), or turn into another vietnam/afghanistan
the regime was unpopular, the US could have collapsed them slowly like they did the soviets, but instead they let israel's "trust me bro" on nukes pull them into another quagmire.
Does it have the political will? No way!
Michael Shurkin-- a former rand analyst and I strongly recommend his podcast-- says that politicians say "there is no military solution" when they mean there is no military solution that people would politically support. The US could do all sorts of things in Iran but the US people would not accept the casualties or the human rights abuses.
You think we need to occupy them? This isn't Iraq.
I would be shocked if there were 50 million atheists in America. Maybe if you included people who are spiritual but do not believe directly in a god. Maybe I could accept it then, but at that point, you are stretching the definition of 'atheist' to its breaking point.
https://gamaan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GAMAAN-Iran-Re...
This survey is heavily weighted towards emigres and people who know emigres.
A few bombs, everyone comes out of closet, unconditional surrender, democracy, live happily ever after... Sounds like American movie...
war and conflict are almost always bipartisan to some degree.
[0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-reporting-team-that-g_n_9... [1]: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iraq/journalism-press-failed-...
This is a stupid war being waged by idiots against idiots . Unfortunately none of those idiots calling the shots will die, it'll be a bunch of kids who just made the mistake of not being rich and powerful enough.
(If you mean Muslims, or Arabs, there are plenty of those in the Israeli parliament too.)
Is this, in your mind, how empires end? I'm not sure if you've cracked a history book in a while, but immigrants built this country. We are a country of immigrants. We win when we get the hardest working, most entrepreneurial, boldest and smartest people to come here. Immigrants are no couch potatoes - on average they work harder than American born citizens do by an order of magnitude for way less pay.
I'm wondering whether Trump knows that Iran won't give up and nevertheless pushes forward, or does he really believe that Iran can surrender? I think that's 99.99999% wrong belief. It feels like he is expressing it only to cover up his actions. He probably knows this will lead to a long-term escalation, but thinks that's the right thing to do for the interests of groups/countries he cares about.
That is literally the ultimate ambition of this war.
There's a long list of middle eastern countries where we've installed our stooges.
The PA didn't really come close to negotiating peace and given Hamas were not able to. See Hamas' suicide bombing campaign during the Oslo peace process. The PA, somewhat as a response to Israeli policy, decided to pursue trying to force Israel to yield via a combination of armed and political struggle and not negotiate with it. Strangely enough security cooperation did continue throughout (and the PA is basically supported by the IDF otherwise it would likely have been toppled). This all happened after the Oslo peace process collpased due to Hamas.
So they want to either change the regime or change the regime, and don't much care which one?
And Iran executes plenty of journalists too.
Maybe. But overall Saudi Arabia has been undergoing pretty dramatic changes in recent years: Women can now drive, are no longer required to wear a hijab, are allowed to work, can meet with male friends/non-relatives without the police stopping them, etc. Yes, it's still a far cry from what women are allowed to do in western countries, and absolute change is still slow, but relatively speaking it's still quite impressive and gives me (and apparently people there) hope.
Source: I was in Saudi and talked to people.
That's not to endorse any of these regimes, including the current Iranian one, just saying the variance is enormous around these events.
If one were really concerned about the Iranians, the first thing they'd hope for is the containment of radiation not a revolution.
Good ol US was fine though, if that's what you mean.
Edit: 3 months, and source: https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2...
On that page you can download an unclassified 2025 Annual Threat Assessment [pdf] where on page 26 it states:
>> We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so. In the past year, there has been an erosion of a decades-long taboo on discussing nuclear weapons in public that has emboldened nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decisionmaking apparatus. Khamenei remains the final decisionmaker over Iran’s nuclear program, to include any decision to develop nuclear weapons.
I also think there is more reading in there that may interest people here.
[0] https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...
[pdf] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-202...
The nuclear physicists got the glory for the Manhattan Project, but the enrichment was the vast majority of the time and cost[1]. Similar ratios apply today. There is zero question that Iran's government is spending a significant fraction of its GDP on enrichment activity that would be economically absurd except as a step towards nuclear weapons--they acknowledge it proudly!
That doesn't mean these strikes were necessarily a good idea. There's no question that Iran was working actively towards a bomb though, even if "building a weapon" gets redefined narrowly to exclude almost all the actual effort.
1. https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-...
Agreed. However, taking into account the full statement (provided by the collective U.S. Intelligence Services) to include the parts about: Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003 and that he has final say in the matter, says they were not working actively towards a bomb.
But there was growing advocation for doing so. Now they have been emboldened further and been given fuel to advocate restarting the program. If Khamenei had so far kept the pro-nuke elements of the regime at bay, this strike may force the very thing that foreign Intelligence roped us into "stopping".
I am not saying they did not have the means; they will rebuild the means, and now they will have the motivation as well as know-how in a way that will be more difficult to stop.
I think this becomes a definitions game again. I'd consider a country to be "working actively towards a bomb" when it's taking costly steps that provide no commensurate benefit except towards a nuclear weapons program. At that point, there's no rational explanation for their actions except that they're working towards the bomb.
So e.g. enrichment of uranium to <3.67% (as permitted by the JCPOA) is not such a step, since that's also economically useful for civilian nuclear power. Enrichment to 60% is such a step--the only conceivable civilian uses are niches for which the cost would far exceed any benefit.
It seems you agree they're enriching in the latter way, but you don't count that as "working actively towards a bomb". So what definition are you using for that phrase? We obviously can't just let the Iranian government decide, or they'll define everything short of a successful test as part of their "peaceful explosive lenses program" or whatever.
My general sense is that the JCPOA was working reasonably well, and it's unfortunate that Trump exited. To the extent these strikes were a necessary solution, they might be to a problem of his own making. I agree that Iran could be emboldened and merely delayed here. That may imply an inevitable endgame of either regime change or near-total destruction of Iran's economic capacity, big escalations and risks.
This stinks of Iraq & WMD. Which the U.S. Intelligence made drastic changes to prevent happening again.
Only now we were on the side of saying there is no proof it was actively being worked on, and the person/state with "proof" also happens to be the state that has been bitterly opposed to Iran and started launching unprovoked missiles. That state also knows how to get what it wants from this administration and suddenly we go from, there is no proof they are doing nefarious things with their program, to they are about nuke us all if we don't do something; all in a matter of weeks.
Or the alternative being the JCPOA. Which was an agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions.
An agreement which failed because the US side reimplemented the sanctions while Iran was in compliance with the agreement.
Yes & No. Thats what I understood the Trump campaign promised, to stop military meddling in other countries religious (or otherwise) conflicts.
Diplomacy is not nothing, and has kept the Iran program from restarting (going by US reports that it was stopped). Now it is all but sure to start up again. Unless the goal was for the US to be suckered into forcing a regime change, and we all know how well those attempts have gone.
> I am surprised we hadn’t attacked them earlier given what they did to our troops in Iraq with EFPs
If it happened at that time with proof and congressional approval then okay, but thats not an excuse for now. Thats how states end up in a war that lasts for a couple or more millennia
Everyone keeps saying Trump didn’t have approval when Congress authorized this
"Breakout time" is how long it takes a country between the political decision to build a nuclear weapon, and actually having one which is militarily usable
Saddam also had WMDs, we just don't know where.
Etc
an iran with a bomb would have to not be the relogious dictatorship anymore, and whatever coup that allowed for the bomb might not have the same opinions about the west as the current one
Presumably if Saddam had built a large reinforced concrete bunker deep in the side of a mountain hours from the nearest city, that might be a place fairly high on your checklist?
My project managers often ask how long a project would take. I might say something like "two weeks after we're approved to start".
The PMs will wait a few months, approve the project, and then look flabbergasted when it is not instantaneously completed! "But you had all this time! Months ago you said it would take weeks!"
But what does this generic knowledge have to do with anything, when the military action is already decided for geo-political reasons? The only decision to make is what pretext to use.
In a way, the 'iraq wmd' justification has proven it's value as a pretext - so why not tweak it and use it again?
I'm tired of the US playing puppetmaster (poorly) around the world, getting involved in conflicts that have nothing to do with us (or rather, creating conflicts when it has to do with access to oil or something). And it's not like we haven't messed up Iran enough already.
But I do not want a nuclear-armed Iran to be a thing. If they were working on it and had a solid program that was likely to bear fruit, I hate to say it, but this was probably the right move. But this is a big "if"; I don't trust this administration to tell the truth about any of this, no more than I trusted Bush Jr when he said Iraq had nukes.
The past two-ish decades has made it clear that nuclear weapons are the only defense against an aggressive power arbitrarily invading.
Even supposing Iran developed a nuclear weapon, their ability to engage in nuclear retaliation depends on (a) the number of warheads, (b) the available delivery mechanisms
An Iran which had only a handful of warheads, and rather limited delivery mechanisms (few or no ICBMs, no SLBMs, no long-range bomber capability) might find its ability to engage in nuclear retaliation against the US extremely limited
Even attempting to use nuclear weapons against Israel or regional US allies, there would be a massive attempt by Israel/US/allies to intercept any nuclear armed missile before it reached its destination
People argued missile defence (as in Reagan's "Star Wars") would never work against the Soviets because they could always just overwhelm it given the superabundance of warheads and delivery systems they had. The same logic does not apply to Iran, because even if it did build a nuke, initially it would only have a handful. Only if they were allowed to build out their nuclear arsenal and delivery systems without intervention, over an extended period, might that eventually come true.
north korea and pakistan actually have nukes. we can be sure of that because of the bullshit they get up to with full impunity from the US. iran doesnt have shit (and it might even have been working in good faith with the nato initiatives, although probably not 100%) thats why it got bombed. and they are gonna learn a fool me once lesson from this. they're gonna go even harder on the anti US pole with china, with the people begrudgingly backing the regime that could have toppled soviet style if the US was patient.
this whole thing was shortsighted from israel and trump should have kept to his "america first" promise
- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past nuclear-reactor grade. What's that? They're enriching past 5%?
- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past medical purposes grade. What's that? They're enriching past 20%?
- There's no evidence Iran has enough to build bombs. What's that? They have enough to build 10 bomb?
- There's no evidence they have a way to deliver bombs <-- you are here
If Israel doesn't continuously try to stop Iran, they might even have a 10 Megaton ICBM and you'll be saying "there's no evidence Iran has ever said it want's to destroy Israel".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device
But they do have ballistic missiles and can hit US allies
The biggest global risk in this case would be that tactical nukes would be back on the menu which would immediately change the face of modern warfare.
OK, they never signed up to it, but still.
Trusting the US or any agreement with it would be foolish.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/08/donald-trump-iran-a...
Ted Cruz can blather whatever he wants (and he also footnoted it to say it was only HIS belief), but only Iran has holy-text justification for the destruction of all Jews, mentioned numerous times in authenticated Hadiths (just search them for "The last hour will not come")
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/red-heifer-temple-institute/
[1] https://cbn.com/news/israel/first-time-after-2000-years-isra...
So, with that being said - which nuclear-obsessive theocracy do you support?
going by project 2025, theres a very significant and influential portion of the american conservative sphere that is pants on head evangelical. and the idea of supporting israel as their christian duty is a huge part of that
lets not pretend this isnt the crusades with nukes. all parties here are operating on barbaric political principles
The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable. Washington, D.C. has some drone and missile defenses. But the rest of the east coast is not protected much.
Iran could also attack the US with drones launched from a small ship off the US east coast. Roughly the same technique Ukraine just used on Russia, using some small expendable ship instead of a trailer.
.
This would mean complete suicide for Iran. The US military basically exists to inflict unimaginable hurt on anyone who does this. Not to mention, an attack on the US is an attack on NATO.
Donald Trump has made it very clear that the US should be looked upon as an adversary.
Iran would definitely possess nuclear weapons after doing something like that. The only question is whether they're armed to explode in the air or when they hit the ground.
It led Iran to make 2 decisions
- Accelerate production of IRBM in order to have 10000 in stock and to build 1000 launchers in order to execute massive launches that will not possible to defend against
- Apparently the did decide to mate their IRBM with nukes as recently there was meeting between whoever managed iranian missiles problem and heads of nuclear project (there is economist article about it).
This comes against backdrop of hamas and hezbollah been wiped. especially hezbollah which was supposed to be strike force against israel with estimated 100k-200k missiles and rockets.
PS. to those who write that jordan/usa intercepted most/a lot. they (together with saudi arabia, uk and france intercepted drones and cruise missiles. out of all IRBM only 6 were intercepted with SM3 missiles from USA ship)
but now after their command was wiped out and they can't sell aid, they have serious financial problems (they need to pay their fighters. it's very transactional).
but in case idf will leave gaza, they will have enough power to dominate the strip.
I'm skeptical of this; any source?
For clarification, those interception efforts last year required massive assistance from the US and Jordan, and required a hugely disproportionate and unsustainable investment of munitions to pull off. What we've seen in the last week is that Israeli air defenses are much more brittle than they want anyone to believe.
EDIT: For the down-voters, here's Bloomberg citing Israeli media that defending against Operation True Promise cost ~$1 billion USD: https://archive.is/WHDvG
and here is NPR about Jordan's assistance: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/15/1244900560/what-is-known-abou...
and here is the NYT questioning Israel's missile stockpiles: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/world/middleeast/israel-i...
I wonder if anything started happening recently that would make Iran less interested in cooperating with the IAEA?
In fact, I think all evidence points to them removing assets from inspected sites knowing that those sites would soon be targets.
> Just explain why you have 60% enriched uranium.
For leverage, obviously.
If Israel were Iran's only rival then it would obviously do everything in its power to become nuclear capable because Israel violated international law to become nuclear capable. However, Iran has many rivals and does not want to set off a nuclear arms race in the middle east.
They also hoped to use the nuclear program as a bargaining chip to lift sanctions.
So Iran had reason to set themselves up to be able to get nuclear weapons, without actually getting nuclear weapons.
Now, that whole policy looks foolish and Iran's only real rational option is to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.
https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-38.pd...
the purpose of the bomb shelter seems obvious - israel is gonna be bombing because israel likes bombing stuff
Edit: If you mean "Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)" [1], that report explicitly mentions up to 60% which is not weapons grade.
[0]: https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2... [1]: https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-24.pd...
Yes, 60% enriched Uranium is not weapons-grade, but it can be made weapons grade very quickly. Once you've gotten to 60%, you've done 99% of the work - U-235 starts as such a small percentage of natural Uranium that most of the process is spent at very low concentrations.
It can simultaneously be true that Iran isn't "imminently creating a bomb" and also that they're actively working towards a breakout point where they could build a dozen bombs in very quick succession once they did decide to go forwards with the process.
I don't personally think they were rushing towards a bomb at this moment, but Israel isn't really in the mood to wait around until they decide to do so.
It turns out there's a big gap between most peaceful purposes and weapons grade, and this was in that gap.
> Uranium with enrichments ranging from 40% to 80% U-235 has been used in large amounts in U.S. thermonuclear weapons as a yield-boosting jacketing material for the secondary fusion stage
Source: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq6.html#nfaq6.2
edit: phrasing. it feels like we're going around in circles nitpicking based on a poor framing and the tendency for innuendo on this topic
All modern nukes are two stage designs, Iran would be insane not to have a fusion stage. It would basically be a Hiroshima style dirty bomb with just 1.5% fissible mass actually fissioned.
Hiroshima was pretty terrible as it was. And I thought the capability that everyone focuses on because it gets nations a seat at the nuclear table was just basic fission weapons. But please correct me if I am wrong.
The bottleneck is UF₆ centrifuges, not the modeling. They're definitely aiming for a fission-fusion design: "The sources note that Iran has attempted to produce deuterium-tritium gas on its own inside Iran - with the help of Russian scientists - but has so far been unable to do so, and due to pressures by the Iranian leadership to accelerate the weapons production program, decided to try to purchase this substance abroad." [0]
India and Pakistan did their first tests ~30 years ago, a lot has changed since then and if you're building a nuke in '25 might as well spend some cash on a simulation cluster and buy some multiphysics simulation software from Russia..
[0] The sources note that Iran has attempted to produce deuterium-tritium gas on its own inside Iran - with the help of Russian scientists - but has so far been unable to do so, and due to pressures by the Iranian leadership to accelerate the weapons production program, decided to try to purchase this substance abroad.
Also, you can use 60% enriched uranium in the primary stage at the cost of a much larger, less efficient, and dirty device.
That same comment also said, even led with “flies in the face of”. That was the most important part of the comment: ‘saying that Iran is enriching weapons-grade uranium “flies in the face of” intelligence reports which reported no weapons-grade uranium.’ But that part was not correct: the difference between Iran’s uranium (60% enriched) and weapons-grade uranium, while >0, is not large enough to characterize that assessment “flying in the face of”.
So yes if you focus on that substring of the comment you are right. But why would you? It’s not the point of the comment.
Which makes it nit picking. Which is why you’re getting so much pushback.
Saying it’s not weapons grade only means you haven’t finished or intend to use something else for the initial stage.
So in other words it’s not weapons grade?
Reduced fat milk is often specifically referring to 2% milk, but 1% milk is also reduced fat milk.
There’s a lot of misunderstanding around this stuff. Technically all you need for a bomb is the ability to go prompt critical on demand which you can do at surprisingly low enrichment levels. What’s a useful weapons grade enrichment to you has a lot to do with your delivery systems not some universal constant. If you’re looking to fit something in a WWII bomber or early generation ICBM that imposes specific limitations.
And yes, in an alternative universe where delivery systems also just appear out of nowhere, you could sprinkle a million tons of 1% uranium over a city.
Little boy was a logistical issue at the time but only 4,400 kg. You can buy a used A380 for a few 10’s of millions. Convert that to a drone is fairly cheap, and you end up with a vastly cheaper system than the cost of producing a nuclear bomb.
Obviously a subsonic aircraft isn’t ideal, but historic ICBM’s ended up being designed for multiple bombs that’s a lot of leeway if you use the same system to deliver a single bomb. What the US considered weapons grade in the 40’s through the Cold War is based on assumptions that simply don’t apply here.
Do you have a citation for this?
60% is just a stepping stone towards 90%.
To get 1kg of U-235 requires 1.11kg at 90% purity, 1.67kg at 60% purity, and 140.6kg at natural 0.711% purity.
Was what Iran doing illegal?
Because this is what underlies all of this -- is the premise that Iran is behaving in an unacceptable and illegal fashion and therefore a legal response with violence is justified.
This all presupposes that Iran is breaking the law with their production of nuclear weapons. Are they breaking the law with their production of nuclear weapons?
Was Iran's activities funding militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which launched attacks against Israel and US forces "legal"? Which of the US' activities were "legal"? It's all mostly a bad joke.
Is the US funding of Ukrainian militias "legal"?
However Iran has the stated intention of destroying the state of Israel, and actively incites it's proxies to attack Israel, and this could be seen as a valid justification for taking action. Not a lawyer though.
Not that we would or should but the US could attack any number of countries today and only if one or more countries stopped the US would the victor be able to say it’s illegal.
Geopolitics operates in an explicitly anarchic arena.
Besides, there is no non-military need for enriching uranium beyond a few percent, so it's very clear what those 60% mean.
Has the Iranian government ever explained why they are enriching uranium?
Say you have 10 ton of 2.5% enriched uranium to safeguard. If you turn it to 60% HEU, now you have only ~400kg of fuel to safeguard against air raids. Density of uranium is ~19 ton/m³, so that would correspond to just 21 liters of HEU, one bucket worth, what would make it very easy to transport and hide. That would make it possible to split it and store in safe locations, for example, inside some deep boreholes, far apart to each other, making it impervious to attack, for the duration of hostilities. Once they pass, it can be recovered and diluted back to 2.5% with natural uranium, reconstituting your original 10-ton fuel amount.
No the US was claiming: "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so." in it's 2025 Threat Assessment. The reports believes they were not working on them and Khamenei has the final authority to restart the program which he had not done. However, they believe there was growing pressured to do so.
Trump just gave the guy reason to green light a weapons project he had so far not wanted.
[pdf] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-202...
Which shows how much of BS the pro-war argument was to begin with.
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Iran
So apparently it's humourous to kill.
It's not like for like, but if you have a rabid population with low education being told to say stuff like this, they will, just because of social pressure and brainwashing.
Related, example of that brainwashing at scale:
- Killing people bad, but patriotic as a soldier.
- Killing people fine on TV, procreational entertainment bad.
- People told what to wear bad, but telling people they must be clothed, good.
- Religion says no killing, or protect those not of the same religion. People still kill, seen as no conflict of interest at all.
- Hording wealth seen as successful, yet society and the world has people suffering and illegal immigration as a consequence of not having it.
- People who don't work are grifters, but most people secretly want to quit their job and not work. Told to see the non workers as people sponging off society.
- Forced to work until your health fails, seen as acceptable.
Point being, no moral high ground because we're all brainwashed.
vs.
> Some band in the USA wrote a song about bombing Iran in 1980.
Yeah, those are completely equal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...
12 civilians were killed. Not "hundreds"
The parent comment says that hundreds were maimed or killed. That is accurate, and clearly contradicts any claim to the strike's "surgical" nature.
Iran isn't actually a nation of pure evil, they are looking out for their own interests and on any given Sunday, are not particularly interested in starting a nuclear conflict. At the same time, understandably, their adversaries are not particularly interested in them having that option.
The risk is when they are backed into a corner where using a nuclear weapon increasingly makes sense. In this case, if you bomb Fordow and can completely eradicate the nuclear weapons, you do eliminate the immediate nuclear risk (though not without creating a slew of new problems to deal with). But, if you fail you have now backed them into a corner where this might become an increasingly reasonable option.
Either way the events of today are very likely to unfold in ways that forever change not only the dynamics of the middle east but global politics as a whole.
> Iran isn't actually a nation of pure evil, they are looking out for their own interests
Exactly. I do my best to consider them an "adversary", not an "enemy" for just that reason.
> The risk is when they are backed into a corner where using a nuclear weapon increasingly makes sense.
I'd argue there are two risks: one is that this puts Iran in a position where, if the regime survives, they will feel (and rightfully so) that the only way to secure their position is to possess them.
It also makes the same statement to other countries in similar positions.
I don't think we have a better option, sadly, but it is a consequence of this action.
Also, I don't think this makes a rational case for use. For possession, yes. For threatening to use them under certain conditions, yes - but the only rational use case for deploying nuclear weapons is if your opponent has already done the same. This became the case when the thermonuclear bomb was invented.
Every country in the world with well organized military is right now working on plans to acquire a nuclear arsenal either by proxy or by way of a domestic nuclear program. That is the legacy of this strike. It puts the point at the end of the exclamation that was Ukraine.
The seeds of a new era of proliferation have been sown, and our children will reap the rewards.
There are now ways to purify uranium much more cost effectively and in better secrecy that centrifuges. Small labs can do it effectively now, and a massively distributed effort would not only make it possible to achieve without needing to buy restricted equipment, it also would make it nearly impossible to disrupt militarily.
You could just open source a design and let the market do the work. It’s of course a terrible idea, which would lead to explosive proliferation and lots of cancer, but it would work. The technical part is challenging but not outside of the reach of serious hobby level efforts.
I will be surprised if we don’t start to see something along these lines cropping up all over the place soon. It’s a natural progression of several technologies that have become vastly more economical and accessible as time goes on.
Maybe, but the US and Israel also just demonstrated that Russian air defense assets (as employed in Iran) can be worthless.
The conflict does make me think the F35 might not be that bad. Granted who knows how Israel got air superiority?
They will not stop, and they can't be negotiated with on this, again because they see it as a religious duty.
they use theology for political mandate and to further their goals. their goals are fundamentally opposed to israel's existence and go against america's interests in the region but they are geopolitical goals wrapped in theological wrapping paper, not mad ravings. no more than israel's "promised land" and america's "christian duty" are
this dehumanization is only going to lead to US boots on the ground and iran becoming an even worse vietnam/afghanistan. the US needs to bring iran down like the soviets were brought down; from the inside. this invading and sabre rattling hasnt worked before and wont work now
If you disagree can you help me understand the difference between these issues?
We've already seen that with North Korea and Libya. NK got to having them before we could stop them. Libya gave up its nuclear program (which is how we learned about Iran's), and we staged a revolution there and regime change.
Which is why they likely were trying to possess them before and the US and Israel felt the need to strike
> I don't think we have a better option
I'd love help getting on board with this
If they managed to get enough of their HEU and any reactor spent fuel out of Fordo and elsewhere into locations we don't know about where they happen to have previously built backup facilities then they could have them very quickly. Hopefully a) they didn't build backup facilities, and b) didn't get a change to spirit away the materials w/o us noticing.
If commercial satellite photography can keep an eye on the movement of trucks in this area, it's probably safe to assume that spy satellites can too.
20 years is reasonable time to rebuild
If we fail, there's still the hope that other commenters here are right, and Iran isn't intent on using them offensively. If so, then Iran itself will be safe from this sort of attack.
... but it will also be clear to every other that the only way to be secure from Western military intervention is to possess nuclear weapons. There will be a precedent of a country acquiring them despite Western demands and surviving. This will lead to a world where proliferation is rampant, but not necessarily one where their use is no longer taboo as it is today.
Like North Korea?
And like Ukraine (conversely).
Turkey/Türkiye has been going the other direction. They're not totally off the reservation, but Erdogan isn't exactly in NATO's inner circle personally.
I don’t wish for more nuclear weapons, but to date, the states with them, usually (a nice apply word) don’t use them.
Does that sound like someone who should have a nuclear arsenal?
That the US decides who can have them is darkly hilariously.
The facility is beneath 80m of limestone which in the Qom formation is roughly equivalent to about 5000psi concrete.
Beneath the limestone, sits the facility itself which is encased in high performance concrete. So these bombs need to pen 80m of 5000psi material and then a unknown depth of high performance concrete.
And US military assets are often much more powerful than publicly advertised...
I know a bunch of armchair generals on here are speculating that this was ineffective, but time will tell.
Why do you believe that to be true?
Military: We can penetrate up to 200 feet with this new bunker buster bomb that we spent a billion dollars on…specifically for this site and some sites in North Korea.
Enemy: Build the bunker at 300 feet, I hear their best bunker buster is only effective to 200 feet.
Military: Damn, foiled again!
The land, roads, ingress points, elevators, security, everything around here is now FUBAR. Okay so you didn't "destroy the bunker", but how many years until it's functional again?
Not saying you're wrong, but... source?
And, if so, where was it moved to?
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858619
The GBU-57 is dope. Really curious to see how well it worked here
https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/npt/
The first bunker-buster :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_bomb
"According to an anecdote, the idea arose after a group of Royal Navy officers saw a similar, but fictional, bomb depicted in the 1943 Walt Disney animated propaganda film Victory Through Air Power,[Note 10] and the name Disney was consequently given to the weapon."
If they built the facility out of 30,000psi concrete, they'd be lucky to pen 4 meters with a direct hit, nevermind the 80m of limestone above it.
[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
But Iran also contains reformers, and the deal was a bet that if you do good diplomacy you can reduce the power and influence of the shit-stirrers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
The relief of sanctions enabled Iran to fund their other activities in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. It also enable the regime to invest in other weapons programs including weapons Iran has been supplying to Russia and those it and its proxies are launching against Israel.
I'm not sure Trump withdrawal from that deal was the best idea but the deal wasn't great either.
The core issue to the most of the world is nuclear proliferation, not low level terrorism and militia groups.
"The thing that prevented them from achieving a nuclear weapon didn't also prevent them from funding x y z other far less problematic things that can be far more easily handled through conventional diplomacy and military action"
Seriously?
It's unsurprising but very, very depressing.
We're working on it, 10-20 more years of legal proceedings and it's done.
Let's conservatively assume a terminal velocity (v) of 400 m/s (approximately 895 mph).
Calculating Kinetic Energy (KE):
The formula for kinetic energy is:
KE = 0.5 * m * v²
Plugging in our values:
KE = 0.5 * 13,600 kg * (400 m/s)²
KE = 0.5 * 13,600 kg * 160,000 m²/s²
KE ≈ 1.088 billion Joules
This is an enormous amount of energy that must be absorbed by the ground to stop the bomb.
---
Resistive Force of Soil (60m penetration estimation):
To simplify, we can use empirical formulas developed from extensive testing. One of the most well-known is Young's empirical formula, which provides a way to estimate penetration depth based on the projectile's characteristics and the soil's properties.
resistive force is as a pressure (force per unit area) acting on the front of the MOP. Let's call this the dynamic soil resistance. The total resistive force (F) would be this pressure multiplied by the cross-sectional area (A) of the bomb.
The cross-sectional area of the MOP (with a diameter of 0.8 m) is
A = π * (radius)² = π * (0.4 m)² ≈ 0.5 m²
---
Calculating Penetration Depth (d):
The work done (W) by the soil to stop the bomb is:
W = F * d
Setting the initial kinetic energy equal to the work done:
KE = F * d
Therefore, the penetration depth is:
d = KE / F
To achieve a 60-meter penetration, the average resistive force would have to be:
F = 1,088,000,000 J / 60 m
F ≈ 18,133,333 Newtons
This is equivalent to a force of over 4 million pounds. While this seems immense, it's plausible given the energies involved.
---
Now, we can calculate the resistive force:
Convert PSI to Pascals (Newtons per square meter):
15,000 psi(assuming) × 6,895 Pa/psi ≈ 103.4 Million Pascals (MPa)
Calculate the MOP's Cross-Sectional Area:
Diameter = 31.5 inches (0.8 meters)
Radius = 0.4 meters
Area (A) = π × (radius)² = π × (0.4 m)² ≈ 0.503 m²
Calculate the Total Resistive Force (F):
Force = Pressure × Area
F = 103,400,000 N/m² × 0.503 m²
F ≈ 52 Million Newtons
So we see that 18 Million Newtons is not enough and the bomb would have to be significantly supersonic, or my calculations are too conservative, or they are overestimating the 60m soil penetration, but we ARE in the same ballpark.
---
now, you might ask how can an object achieve over 1 Mach terminal velocity?
At high altitudes (like 30,000-50,000 feet): The air is much colder and less dense. For instance, at 35,000 feet, the temperature can be around -54°C, and the speed of sound drops to about 295 m/s (about 660 mph).
In this high-altitude, low-density environment, the MOP's terminal velocity is incredibly high. It can easily accelerate past the local speed of sound (which is already lower due to the cold) and go supersonic, then slowing down when near ground.
The bomb is also likely designed like a super aerodynamic dart to achieve maximum terminal velocity.
It does seem like we're nearing the limit of what can be done with aircraft though. The challenge of hitting the ground much harder seems to be greater than just digging your facility a little deeper (that said, I've nevler dug a hole that deep either so perhaps I'm wrong about that also).
It’s odd to have a country that illegally proliferated treating a neighbor who isn’t doing that yet as the greatest threat to world piece. Backed by the only country that’s used nuclear weapons in anger.
It’s very possible that in a decade the Us will be at war in Iran. Trump and Netanyahu will be off the world stage. The cost to the US will be thousands of lives and several trillion and China will have taken Taiwan while we aren’t capable of stopping them.
These wars always seem to start well because destroying things is the easy but.
We don’t know if we’ve done much damage to the buried facilities. Bunker busters don’t dive very deep, they can be deflected via engineering, and concrete is cheap.
Conflict like this are what will definitively end “The American Century” and we are currently witnessing that.
You cannot bomb your way to peaceful coexistence.
83.7%, according to the United Nations: https://apnews.com/article/iran-nuclear-uranium-enrichment-g...
Only 6.3% short of weapons-grade.
As for the rest of your comment, you might find information about modern-day bunker busters interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/20/world/middlee...
The ones used for this operation go 197 feet, including 25 solid feet of high-strength concrete, with just one bomb. The idea is to use multiple bombs trailing one another to achieve extra depth. It's too soon yet to tell if that worked, or not.
The US posturing against Iran dates back to the Cold War era when Iran was tagged as “northern tier” state, and any nationalist moves inside looked like a Soviet opening, and a threat to the Anglo stronghold of Iran's Oil.
I immediately thought about Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.... wasted youth
It's also very likely, and so far an exact figure is yet to be reported, that several smart, kind, and non-hostile scientists working towards a clean energy program were killed by this strike.
Celebrating death for the sake of a hypothetical is a very dangerous attitude, and is frankly repugnant to see as a top comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349794
Work through the cognitive dissonance; it’ll be okay.
Fordow sits beneath a thick cap on a limestone–dolomite mountain, whose compressive strength rivals granite, and the facility is at least at 90 to 100 meters. If a warhead detonates the carbonate stack fractures and absorbs the pressure wave, calcite dissociation soaks up heat, keeping the cavern wall below all braking thresholds and leaving the target probably intact.
And they had hundreds of trucks in and out the days before the attack: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/22/satellite-images-show-activi...
Maybe Iran will not retaliate, not because the attack was successful but because it was not.
This one is probably the highest resolution, publicly available picture post attack. It's notable how the fence is still perfectly aligned...
https://static-cdn.toi-media.com/www/uploads/2025/06/AFP__20...
Who authorized Manhattan Project?
As for the facts, and not just the narrative: 60% enrichment is not considered weapons-grade enrichment, and it is not illegal under the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Therefore, today's attack is an illegal act of aggression against another country, violating international law. Those are the facts.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
That's what Iran state media says. Has anyone else said this?
This is why I think the most likely scenario is that Israel will commit to regime change. Israel can't trust the current regime to not race to a nuclear weapon at this stage, and Israel can never be over 99% certain that a clandestine effort isn't being done outside of the current understanding of intelligence. "Assume the worst" seems to be a doctrine they adhere to.
The problem is that the US government appear to support them in whatever craziness they aim for. That's the part that makes this a lot more problematic.
Happened with Japan in WW2, too, although that was a surrender rather than bottom up. But still a form of regime change. There are many ways it could play out.
…
> 60% enrichment is not considered weapons-grade enrichment.
So which is it?
1. They already have enriched uranium and can just make a bomb now
2. They don’t have weapons-grade enriched uranium (and now probably cannot enrich it)
Whether they had the theoretical ability to complete enrichment or not last week, does not matter, because they likely do not have it now.
Did you have to add that qualifier because otherwise there's at least one other nuclear power in Middle East that regularly bombs civilians.
These people don’t deserve fair trial
Source: Because I said so
—-
"Might makes right"
"The stronger always blames the weaker"
"My need of food is guilt enough of yours" ("Ты виноват уж тем, что хочется мне кушать")
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_and_the_Lamb
This is going to hit gas prices, the markets and US security considerations all in order to help keep the current Israeli leadership out of Israeli prisons. Bad move.
A lot of people saying this, what would this actually entail? My money is much more on this being a "1 and done" exchange. Iran poses very little threat now, launchers being taken out everyday, leadership chain wiped out, seemingly no other Iran allies getting pulled into the fold
The propaganda at the moment is israel is winning, iran isnt using missiles because of "air superiority", and the US is able and willing to detroy the nuclear capacity via the air. All of these claims are false. Iran's capacity to strike back remains vast using only its own resources.
What the US has been dragged into by israel is an amazing opportunity for a US peer competitor (china) to grind down its arms -- it would be remarkable if China doesn't take it. It can hardly afford the US to be a well-armed protector of Taiwan.
The iranian regieme's apparent hesitation at the moment is not as extreme as russia's on the first days of the ukraine war, and look at where we are now. This apparent hesitation is waiting for israel to deplete its missile defense, waiting for a more stable intelligence environment (presumably moving assets, etc. around out of uncovered israeli operations), and most of all, waiting for a moment to strike off-guard.
If the US had lost a B2 during the operation, then sure, that would be a major loss. But as far as I can tell we did not.
If we get involved in a ground invasion, sure, that’s a different matter.
A ground war in europe, one in the middle east -- all of the US assets in distant seas, its bombs in distant lands. Pretty good time to be a china on tour.
Sure, maybe some targeted commando raids here and there. They’re already doing that.
Large scale invasion though? Almost logistically impossible unless you’re telling me the maps I’ve looked at my whole life are state propaganda too.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-navy-receives-second-o...
This is not a serious suggestion.
As far as I can tell, israel is doing everything it can to escalate the situation to a place where the US is forced into it. We'll have to see if it can be avoided.
The problem for iran is that while they may believe the US is unwilling to escalate, and so be happier to go "arms down" -- they won't be allowed to by israel. So they're being forced up the escalation ladder.
There are very many things that they can do which would destabilise US military and economic interests directly. One imagines israel will do everything i can to provoke such a response.
Do I think israel is inclined to try, or otherwise, risk failure on the back of US blood and treasure? More or less, yes -- i think that's quite likely.
The US invasion and occupation of vietnam, afganistan, iraq, etc. were all mad. The US foreign policy elite are not very competent because america doesnt receive any real blowback from its failures -- so there's no conditioning mechanism to force it into instutitonal competence.
Do I think such an elite would do one more stupid thing? yes, its actually far more improbable that they'd learn caution
They've bankrupted america, caused half the world to turn against them -- all the while presiding over the rise and enrichment of a peer competitor (china). You could not describe a more incompent, warmongering, self-destructive set of foreign policy institutions.
It's what happens when you are isolated on your own continent and rarely have to pay for your decisions.
Israel's state government is absolutely filled to the brim with war hawks - but they're not stupid. The situation they want to contain is too large to fix with IDF ground forces, they necessarily have to involve US force structures to seriously challenge Iran. And even then, it feels likely that we'd be looking at an Afghan War situation where guerrilla combat absolutely shreds the modern forces the further they push in.
...but I will repeat myself - this is an attack of opportunity for Israel, not a desperate scramble to destroy nuclear assets. Israel's long-term goal is to become the unquestioned geopolitical power of the Levant, even outside America's auspices. They can do that by leveraging the dumb-as-a-brick administration to provoke Iran into a response, at which point they will fight until attrition forces them both to retreat. Now Israeli forces are the de-facto security guarantor in the region, and we already know they draw their borders however they like.
Mind you, this isn't the last you'll hear about "Iran's nuclear program" - it hasn't outlived it's usefulness, quite yet. Israel will continue targeting them not until nuclear assets are destroyed, but until America perceives itself to be backed into a corner with no choice but to search Iran door-to-door for a hidden bomb. (Stretch Goal - +100 Brownie Points: get America to launch a tactical nuclear weapon on Iran and increase the escalation ladder beyond what any peer power can compete with.)
In any case, I'm talking about inferred goals, capacity, strategy. I'm constructing a viable theory of what their strategy would be if they achieved their aims.
The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air. It might be that israel is content to lose on these objectives, and so be it.
I expected that most of my comments here would be heavily downvoted, and its somewhat suprising that they arent. Most people are operating from a profoundly heavily propagandized view of foreign policy, and of their own countries -- and whenever one raises thinking about these issues in ways which suspend this propaganda one gets a very angry reaction: everyone one is a nationalist, either midly or extermely, but a nationalist never the less. Asking people to thinking critically about their nation is tantamount to asking them to thinking critically about their mother.
Either way, I comment regardless for the few who are able to think clearly on these matters.
This is key. The only way for this set of actions to go well is if there is regime change, otherwise the most likely outcome is that Iran's resolve to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible has been dramatically solidified.
Like you though, I struggle to see any clear path for positive regime change to occur. The nearest attempt would be boots (but whose?) on the ground, but even that seems unlikely to work out well. Maybe there could be some sort of internal resistance, but I don't see how they could operate successfully while the country is under external attack.
My assumption with how things are at the moment is that the actions by Israel and the USA have all but guaranteed that Iran acquires a nuclear weapon in the next few decades, and so have dramatically increased the risk of Israel being attacked with one. One has to assume that radical Islamist terrorism in western countries will increase too.
Oof, OK, I suppose not, you only said "The [my emphasis] ground invasion hasn't started yet". There is some degree of ambiguity there. Forgive me for thinking you were saying one will happen.
> The goals of israel are regime change and nuclear disarmament -- these cannot be achieved from the air.
Ah! Is that a prediction you insist will happen? That there will be no regime change and no end to Iran's military nuclear programme without a ground invasion? Great! That's a testable hypothesis. Let's see.
> It's also an inherently ridiculous thing to say -- if I am wrong about highly complex geostrategic outcomes then i should never think about them again?
No, not at all (and I certainly didn't say "think", I said "speculate"). It's just a way of seeing if you put your money where your mouth is. If there is an incentive to someone predicting wrongly I'm more likely to take them seriously!
if either were, this would be the first instnace in history -- so, presumably, i could be forgiven for the mistake
but either way, I dont think israel believes they can be either
[1] https://iranwire.com/en/politics/136431-how-the-snapback-mec...
Generous estimates place relevant bomb capacity in the US at 100, though I believe only ~1/3 of that is confirmed. Reports say ~10 were used. So, speculatively, the US has used 25% of its capacity to bust deep fortifications -- and, imv, failed to make a dent.
Credible estimates I'm aware of talk about dozens of bombs (per similar deep fortification), seriously depleting US capacity. It's unlikely the US would be willing to use up more than 50% of its bombing capacity here -- since a very large number of bombs are required for deep fortifications of this kind.
ie., US capacity is about "destroying two mountains", and it really needs at least to retain capacity to destroy one.
A well-designed nuke could take out the mountain, that's really the best air-supplied shot at taking the thing out.
Either way, none of this can be confirmed without ground forces. So one wonders if at least some of this theatre is to provoke iran enough to react in a way that justifies a ground invasion.
To your point, yes, china would absolutely love the US to degrade as much capacity as it possibly can. One images, even, they'd spin up a nuclear programme in iran very quickly again, just to try to drag the US back in. The US has done much worse.
China's geostrategic goal at the moment is stamp on the rope-pins around the US elephant: ukraine, iran, israel, and so on. Have the US blow as much as possible of its rapidly depleting military arsenal everywhere but around china.
Trump was the first president to really take this problem seriously, it's a little unfortunate that he's found himself in the same trap as every US president for the last 25 years.
What propaganda ? I’ve seen the footage of Iran firing flak cannons somewhere in the direction of f35s. Not a single Israeli plane has been lost…where is the lie ?
Iran has a population of 92mil and an economy vastly stronger than iraq 2003* why assume they want the current leadership to remain in charge? Why assume they wanted nukes ?
You mention China grinding down its enemy ? What about the fact the air force is actually performing real missions being and gaining real experience ? Is a few bunker busters going to grind down the USAF ?
All we can work backwards from are the most reliable facts we have before the war, about capabilities on the ground. We know the rough size of the iranian missile programme, of the country, economic, various military assets and similar.
We can work backwards from this to ask, "what would we be able to see had Israel achieved its claim re iran" -- and we're talking extraordinary levels of destruction in iran, across the country, and so on. We don't have any evidence of operations of that scale even taking place, let alone having been successful.
It is most likely, at the moment, that at least some alleged air force victories by israel are actual missiles they've issued from neighbouring states on the land.
However, either way, all of this is speculation. What can be stated with near certainty is that any picture presented in the media is an extremely careful creation of the propaganda arms of our states, and not a credible military briefing.
Our only access to reliable inferences is purely rational and hypothetical: what are X's aims, what are their claims, what are they claimed strategies, what are their capabilities and so on.. and then what would we see *if*...
For those reading the above, wondering about this phenomenon, read Baudrilliard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. Even if you don't agree with Baudrilliard's overall thesis, the facts he brings up are still cogent (e.g. a photo from the Exon Valdez spill was used instead of an actual photo of the Iraqi military's destruction of Kuwaiti oil fields). The media has been a critical aspect of war since at least the Falklands War.
The source of most of the videos from both sides is random social media users.
Even the videos and info from the IDF I would regard as credible, since they released similar videos and info from the Lebanon operation last year that was consistently corroborated by evidence from social media (there was no internet blackout in Lebanon so every IDF strike on an urban area had multiple videos from different perspectives).
I called the war for Russia ~2 years ago, just as the "counter offensive" by Ukraine was starting. Go back, if you wish, to that time in the news and find exactly what english-speaking western median, and social media, was saying.
What is the picture you get, of Ukraine and its counteroffensive, delivered to you from these sources?
It's always a little stunning just how easy it is for publics to be manipulated. Oh what a world.
Anyway why don’t we see videos from Iran of Israeli jets being shot down ? Why is there no footage of Irans airforce engaging Israel ? Why didn’t the B-2 spirits get attacked ? You can say it’s all lies and propaganda , but it’s not because there is no evidence to the contrary being presented.
I can make no specific claims as to any actions by any one involved in the conflict, if iran had shot down f35s presently, it'd be highly likely covered up by both sides. Iran to protect knowledge of its capability, and israel to ensure domestic morale is maintained.
Either way, that wasn't my claim.
> Iran to protect knowledge of its capability
Protect knowledge against who? Israel will know if one of their planes were shot down, US will know. Besides, Iran claims to have shot down f35s, so they clearly want people to think they have that capability.
I was not making a claim about F35s anyway, I have no specific information nor have I considered any, on relevant claims about F35s
Source please.
What do Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Dubai have in common?
All of their oil tankers sail through a 20mi strip of water called the Straight of Hormuz, completely bordered by Iran on one side. Saudi Arabia has access to the Red Sea and a bunch of pipelines to take some of their oil there, but most of their maritime ports are in the Persian Gulf.
You don't need hypersonic ballistic missiles to take out an oil tanker. Save those for Israel, all you need is a few drones, speedboats, and mines.
Oh, what's that, a good chunk of attack drones undergoing "field trials" in Ukranian population centers are Iranian-made purchased by Russia? And those drones are designed to be launched from mobile trucks in any non-descript garage instead of static missile silos?
We've seen what a rag-tag group of Yemeni rebels with some light rockets have done to ocean shipping at the chokepoint to the Red Sea, now we're gonna see what the people supplying the Houthi's can do at the chokepoint to the Oil Sea.
Hope y'all enjoyed your sub-$2 gas prices.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-urges-china-dissuade-...
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday called on China to encourage Iran to not shut down the Strait of Hormuz after Washington carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Rubio's comments on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo" show came after Iran's Press TV reported that the Iranian parliament approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of global oil and gas flows.
It's possible that #2 will happen via domestic uprising, but not at all clear whether the result of that would be a friendlier regime that is less interested in going nuclear. It could very plausibly instead be hardliners who are pissed the regime failed to put up a strong enough fight. (I think that would be what would predictably happen in the US in this scenario, for instance!)
And if it's not a domestic uprising, it's a bloody regime change war like the ones fought in the 00s, which ... didn't turn out great, if you recall!
Possibly #1 is a better outcome. But I'm very skeptical that "we'll just bomb a big country periodically" is a strategy that will never escalate into protracted war.
For as long as I've been alive, every action from the US in the middle east been a "1 and done" exchange, and Bush famously hosted a "Mission Accomplished" party two months after the start of the invasion of Iraq.
I'd be surprised if this was the only action from the US' side during this war, based on history, but maybe things are different today, seems highly unlikely though.
Either way: This doesn't stop here, and it was never about these bogus nuclear weapons (which are just around the corner since the 80's) just like Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction. They want to place a puppet government...what could go wrong?
Chance of terrorist activity on US soil in the next 10 years has increased.
I don’t think it’s improved things for the US.
Neighboring countries like KSA have openly declared their intention to get nukes.
They could give the nuke to a proxy (or have it stolen) who then detonates it either at a US military base in the region or on US soil.
The Glorious Revolutionary Militia of country X, using Iranian built and supplied drones or missiles, blows up young American soldiers in a country half the electorate didn't even know there was a presence in. Iran disclaims all involvement, but says they sympathise with the legitimate frustration of the locals. Do you think the United States gets involved in a hot war against Iran based on that?
Remember the Beirut truck bombings. The biggest single day US Marine loss of life since Iwo Jima. Reagan (and Mitterand) immediately says there will be no withdrawal. They shoot a lot of artillery in the general direction of Hezbollah from a boat, then immediately withdraw all troops.
You're implying that a foreign power bombing Iran would make the people less likely to support their government. Do you have justification for that?
Are you sure about that now? Did you miss the part where your president was openly discussing plans on annexing territories from it's allies?
Ah, the American exceptionalism..
I think you're underestimating how many Iranians the CIA allowed to be tortured and raped in the Shahist regime. Agree to disagree?
Socialists who kept supporting khomeini after it became very clear that he sent in thugs to murder his own supporters, so he could blame "zionists" for the killings, or that he sent snipers into a protest to fire from within the crowd at security services ... I mean socialists use tactics like that even today, although of course compared to khomeini even the KGB look like gentle souls.
That's one reason everything about Iran's theocratic regime is called "revolutionary this", "the supreme blahblah council", or the double army structure, the reason that a theocracy has a ministry of labour (which unions are forced to be part of, you know, like the soviet union) ... it was created and organized by socialists. They came to power through student protests and union strikes.
Then khomeini started executing them. First, 3800 at once, then between 300 and 1000 every year. Khamenei is dutifully continuing the islamist executions. This year is definitely going to be 5000+ executions.
You know how many deaths are actually attributed to the evil interference of the US in Iran before the revolution? What socialists tried to fix? The reason they supported the mass-murdering clerics?
... 89 people.
> "A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the American strike on the Fordo site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility but said the strike had severely damaged it, taking it “off the table.” The person noted that even 12 bunker-busting bombs could not destroy the site."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/22/world/middlee... ("Assessing the Damage at the Nuclear Sites the U.S. Attacked")
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/world/middleeast/iran-for... ("Iran’s Fordo Site Said to Look Severely Damaged, Not Destroyed")
Linked articles also have new satellite imagery from Maxar and Planet.
The US and Israel were lucky that Iran built their Fordow plant only 50 meters underground. What will the US do when Iran rebuilds it far deeper? They have a coal mine going 1200 meters deep.
Iran is technologically far more capable than North Korea, which ultimately succeeded in building the bomb. The US knows this and wouldn't have started this war if Israel hadn't done it first.
The first Iran deal in 2015 was not perfect, but it would have provided some guarantees for 15 years. If Iran is determined, how many years has this bombing bought? If I had to guess, Israel is back calling doom ~3 years when the US is having new elections.
Israel doesn't want the removal of the Iran sanctions, why would they? This means whatever deal the US makes with Iran, it's not going to be good enough for Israel.
They were already having this negotiation, and we started bombing them in the middle of it.
And they already negotiated an agreement a decade ago, and we ripped it up.
It's fine if you think we should have ripped up the JCPOA, or if you think it was good that we joined Israel in this war in the middle of the new negotiation.
But it's simply deluded to think we are a credible negotiating counterparty after this fact pattern.
So you are saying that if Iran has said one week ago - we will blow up all of the nuclear faculties on Sunday we will give you all of our enriched uranium on Monday, Trump would have still bombed them this Saturday?
Don't get me wrong, I think there could be a face-saving announcement at some point, that we've come to some agreement. But it will have no credibility (on either side).
Yeah, probably.
Rebuilding any credibility internationally will require concerted effort by the legislative and judicial branches (and maybe states ratifying amendments) to rein in the currently out of control power of the executive.
It has now become even more obvious to them that the most powerful country on earth is willing to attack them in order to control them and their region. Their calculus just went from “probably screwed if we don’t have nukes” to “definitely screwed if we don’t have nukes”. They’ll find a way now, they can always dig deeper.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/wait-why-is-israel-allow...
> Their calculus just went from “probably screwed if we don’t have nukes” to “definitely screwed if we don’t have nukes”.
Or, option 3: totally fine if we don't try to get nukes.
What if they weren't working on nukes and got bombed anyway - can you imagine what kind of situation that would put them in?
The current regime is not safe without them. You can’t honestly believe they are unless you are totally ignorant of the history and state of the region. So the current regime will keep trying until they succeed or are replaced.
You’re right, they could chill and be fine. If they trusted the US, or Russia, or China enough to protect them, or trusted Israel to leave their regime alone for the next 100 years. Do you think it’s reasonable for them (the current theocracy) to have this trust in their current position? I find it much more rational that they do not.
I don’t think the Iranian regime looks at Egypt as either totally fine or even in an enviable state, security-wise.
I think allowing nuclear weapons in Iran is a very small chance of a very bad outcome, and an almost guaranteed chance of a middling outcome.
How do you balance these? What are the actual risks? I’d love to read more people’s analysis on it.
I don't see how it could be worst, any other gov in Iran would be better for the world and for the peoples in Iran.
Are you genuinly thinking that giving nuclear weapons to terrorists is a good idea?
The Iranian regime is literally sending terrorists in Russia equipment to murder innocent people on the daily, but that’s fine for most people…
Most likely Israel would attack even before such a facility became operational. It’s not like they haven’t done preemptive strikes before.
And then what? They have nuclear weapons? Which is what Israel and the US doesn't want.
Also, Iran didn't even let inspector into all of the enrichment sites they had, so they were breaking the original deal with Obama from the start.
I should point out that this view is not unanimous. Using Politifact as a source [1]:
"We reported in 2017 that Iran had largely complied with the deal, and many experts praised the pact for keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of Tehran. Over the 28 months the deal was in effect, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it found Iran committed no violations, aside from some minor infractions that were addressed."
And from their linked article[2]:
"A complex, technical process like this one is inevitably going to face small hiccups," said Ariane M. Tabatabai, visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. "Just as Iran believes there have been hiccups on the U.S. side."
My understanding is that Iran was largely complying with the treaty by the time Trump decided to scrap it.
[1] https://api.politifact.com/article/2025/jun/18/Iran-nuclear-...
[2] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/jun/14/karen-hand...
Then when we’re headed to war and passed all the obvious signs then say, “not my fault this known grifter got elected.”
Voters don’t get to ignore Biden and previous administrations pulling us out of middle eastern wars and creating agreements with countries like Iran. Then voters were warned and ignored that the military and weapons lobbies are creating hysteria so they can go back to war and get that defense spending money back.
The war machine has been behind Trump and Republicans for 10+ years and you missed it because voters believe one of Trump’s lies about not wanting war. A guy who lies about everything has voters convinced.
People ARE dying because USAID was scrapped. It will be in the millions by the end of his term. Do you understand how starvation and disease work? It doesn’t happen the day you cut off funding for a tax break for the rich.
You must be living under a rock to think any of his actions have been effective.
You do get to be held accountable for your vote when you eat the result of letting this mad man into a powerful leadership position. When prices go up, you no longer get to turn around and say “liberals did this”. When they deploy ground troops in Iran for 20 years, you do not get to blame “all of us Americans”. When you get pushed out of your social activities because people hear you support genocide in Gaza and going to war in Iran after tearing up agreements and enabling violations of cease-fires like a child, you do not get to turn around and say “I’m satisfied so you must be too. It’s not fair that I’m being socially prosecuted.”
It goes on and on because that’s how reality works if you never follow up then you will never know the effect and the rate at which it happens. Keep plugging your ears!
USA is now an unreliable ally at best and the military industrial complex is a massive loser because of this switch.
Also, Trumps budget only spans a few years while a good export relationship ensures decades of business.
USA only has a limited amount of time left to dictate these things. We are playing with fire before the world order shifts. It is inevitable, and we would all be better off recognizing this and working towards a better future for all of humanity than trying to pretend like the USA is always going to be able to dictate who gets to do what.
Iran, OTOH, can't have the nuclear weapons they could produce themselves.
(BTW can your neighbor, who keeps saying that he's going to kill you, or maybe your friend, obtain a machine gun? Would you approve of that?)
Definitely. This is America. There is nothing I can do to stop them.
> Would you approve of that?
No, but I don’t really have much of a say in the matter, and that’s kind of the point. I just have to accept it and try to make peace with my neighbor.
Are you suggesting that if your neighbor threatens you that you should just go over and murder them first?
Thy are currently doing to Palestinians what they are suggesting Iran would potentially do to them.
If they had a deterrent, Israel would think twice. But since this neighbour stole a machine gun, they can do what they want...
Also selling oil will only work for a few more decades before people stop buying. It isn't sustainable anymore
I don't think anyone today would feel any differently about preventing Pakistan from attaining nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately it's very difficult to take nukes away from a country.
Iran has massive earthquake risks. For reasons unassociated with nuclear bunkers they do a lot of research into (fibre, and other) strengthened cement construction. With obvious applications to their nuclear industry of course.
Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour.
Iran does not have the same degree of sexist restrictions as eg Saudi Arabia. It's a very different climate from places where salafism is more common. Female education in particular is highly supported eg: https://x.com/khamenei_ir/status/1869369086142296490
The gender ratio is similar in other Middle Eastern countries. Once women in the Islamic world get the legal right to educate themselves, they tend to make use of it much more than men do. It is a pathway towards personal independence.
I thought it was generally known that richer societies with me equal treatment - where people are generally more able to choose jobs they like rather than needing to take whatever's a ticket to a decent life - are the places with higher disparities in well-paying occupations?
And, if it weren't enough, you can always put a second bomb into the hole made by the first one.
To the commenters below:
- nobody would let Iran to come even close to remilitarizing again. No centrifuges, and no placing them or anything similar under ground, etc.
- I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. The no-fly is necessary, and Israel just doesn't have enough resources. The further scenario that i see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44343063
- jugding by, for example, the precise drone strikes on the top military commanders, Israel has had very good intelligence from Iran, so i'm pretty sure that general parameters like the depth were well known to them (the public statement of 300ft may be a lie, yet the point is that US and Israel know the depth and thus weapons to use)
How would they enforce that? It is underground, they can't exactly monitor what is down there with satellite photos. There'd need to be something like a blanket ban on underground mining across the whole of Iran and probably a country-wide occupation to enforce the ban. Otherwise it seems quite difficult to identify where the hypothetical centrifuges are.
EDIT: I kind of wish you had broken your "commenters below" piece into separate replies, but I assume this one was directed at me:
> - I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. The no-fly is necessary, and Israel just doesn't have enough resources. The further scenario that i see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44343063
I didn't even consider a no-fly zone, and perhaps. I mean at this point, the current Iranian regime is in the most precarious situation it has ever been in whether they go for the kill against Ali Khamenei or just keep picking out the people below him and the IRGC's ability to fight. But if we do this, then we, and I guess I mean we now that we've actually bombed them, then we're committing to more than just taking out their nuclear capabilities, but we're committing to seeing a full regime change come to fruition.
To be blunt, given our most recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm still very much of the opinion that the least amount of American involvement, the better. If our bombs help curtail Iran's nuclear weapon R&D and we didn't lose a single B-2 in the process, then great, we've done some good for the world[1], but our track record on seeing regime changes through to the end has been less than fabulous.
[1] Still waiting to see how successful the mission was towards this goal by the way.
Please don't bring this kind of BS to the discussion
Well given that we've been trying to stop that for many years, I doubt its within the US's gift to change that.
Also what has iran got to loose now? like its already being bombed to shit. It's lost a generation to the iran/iraq war, why not another one where they take the USA, israel and saudis with them?
> I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran.
that sounds like a forever war. Moreover trump doesn't have the attention span to deploy a nofly zone for any length of time.
also, have you see the size of iran?
> Israel has had very good intelligence from Iran, so i'm pretty sure that general parameters like the depth were well known to them
yup, but the performance of munitions is unknown. Moreover they are not actually going to tell anyone the real results of the strike. Can you imagine generals telling Hegseth that his plan idea has failed because the clearly articulated unknowns came to pass. let alone trump?
This is tremendously difficult. There is nothing unclassified to suggest we can do this. (There is also no evidence it didn’t occur. Just clarifying the borders of the fog of war here.)
More than 30 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing
"At 04:30 on the morning of 13 February, two F-117 stealth bombers each dropped a 910 kilograms (2,000 lb) GBU-27 laser-guided bomb on the shelter. The first bomb cut through 3 metres (10 ft) of reinforced concrete before a time-delayed fuse exploded. Minutes later, the second bomb followed the path cut by the first bomb."
You seem to believe they really have accurate information about these installations. I doubt it.
Getting the layout of an underground facility, on the other hand, is quite hard to do even on purpose. They'd really want the engineering plans I suppose - which should be quite secure even on a bad day. I wouldn't assume it was secure but it'd be harder than finding senior leadership who often go out in public or to their kids school plays in a regular year.
Most certainly was. It's underground (Fordow is ~60m?) so it's either that or nukes.
As a strategy, I see this as flawed. A dirty bomb remains viable with partially enriched materials.
(This does not mean to imply I support either bombing or production of weapons grade materiel. It's a comment to outcome, not wisdom)
A dirty bomb is basically Hollywood nonsense, and wouldn't use uranium to begin with because it isn't very radioactive.
The premise is that you put radioactive materials into a conventional explosive to spread it around. But spreading a kilogram of something over a small area is boring because you can fully vaporize a small area using conventional explosives, spreading a kilogram of something over a large area is useless because you'd be diluting it so much it wouldn't matter, and spreading several tons of something over a large area is back to "you could do more damage by just using several tons of far cheaper conventional explosives".
Far more concerning is the possibility that they give it away to someone else. Enrichment is nonlinear, going from 60% to the 90% needed for weapons is a fairly trivial amount of work.
I wouldn't discount it, though. Remember, feelings matter more than facts. Magnitudes more people die on the road than in the air, but we know how well that translates to fear and action.
I mean heck, how about 9/11 compared to COVID? Wearing a mask for a while: heinous assault on freedom, Apple pie, and the American way. Meanwhile, the post-9/11 security and surveillance apparatus: totally justified to keep America safe
Deliverable nuclear weapons make you invasion proof - nobody wants to risk it. A "dirty bomb" isn't something that can come flying in on an ICBM and eliminate large chunks of your nation - the threat of it is more likely to enhance aggression rather then deter it.
Tl;dr is that the amount of energy required to separate a mixture of gasses (U238 waste and U235 product) is roughly proportional to the logarithm of the ratio of the U238 percentage and the U235 percentage. So as your feed stream becomes more enriched in U235, it becomes much easier to do subsequent separations. This log relationship is an approximation, but arises out of the statistical mechanics of separating two mixed gasses and the resulting decrease in entropy.
Edit: a key point most people I'm guessing aren't aware of: centrifuges don't really care what you feed them, whether the feed is natural or 20% or 89% enriched, they just get increasingly more efficient so that a single "pass" through them produces a greater amount of separation as the feed stock becomes more enriched. They do a fixed amount of "separative work" each pass. The same machines can be used to enrich from natural to 20% as 20%-90% (with some relatively minor caveats), and in fact it takes far fewer machines to do the 20-90 step at the same rate as natural-20.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing
(The other half of it is that, as you progressively enrich, you start to discard the "depleted" part of the mass flow, and work only with the, gradually smaller, "enriched" mass flow).
Israel is widely believed to possess around 90 nuclear warheads.
Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that.
That's clever. Virtue signaling 101. And when things turn worse you can pat yourself on the back claiming that your virtue was intact and you were on the "right side of history". You can pretend that none of the violence is related to the side you chose.
The fact is that western ignorance is deeply at fault for the violence in Gaza. Probably more so than many others. Why?
There are three sides to this conflict:
* Moderate people - these are moderate Israelis and Palestinians. These are by far the majority. They might not agree on all the details or even on a Palestinian state, but they don't want violence and will try to avoid it when possible.
* Zero sum players - e.g. Hamas and Israelis who commit crimes e.g. deep settlements, war crimes etc. Some of them are sadly even in the Israeli government now. They've gained strength in Israel thanks to Hamas violence and vice versa. They feed each other. For every Hamas terrorist plot, the Israeli extremists build their base further and commit their own atrocities which result in Hamas gaining traction.
* Chaos actors - This is where Iran is. Some chaos actors don't care who wins and in some cases they choose a side. This is also where you reside. It is not a good place to be in.
Now you might have the knee jerk reaction. You think you're one of the "good guys", but you're not. You picked a side and you throw the blame on Israel while ignoring the legitimate facts Israel has in waging war against a zero-sum player (Hamas).
By blaming Israel for the destruction in Gaza you essentially tell Hamas: no harm no foul. Hamas hears you loud and clear. They can sacrifice all the Palestinian lives, starve them, use children and civilians as cannon fodder. As far as many in the west are concerned, Israel is the only one to blame. That removes their incentive to surrender and encourages them to escalate the violence.
The way they see it is that this encourages hostility which will keep the war going forever. They think that it will create a situation in which Israel will lose western support and will collapse as a result. The problem with this logic is that if Israel loses western support it will likely shift to the extreme right-wing and in that situation the Palestinians would be in serious trouble.
Want proof?
Go to a pro-Palestine rally carrying both a Palestinian flag and an Israeli flag to support co-existence which is supposed to be their goal. It isn't. Try wearing a yellow ribbon in such a rally to encourage the return of innocent civilians from Gaza. Same thing. These are not pro-Palestine rallies, they are anti-Israel rallies. Is it any surprise that Israel is becoming more extreme?
they're saying in fewer words "watch what leaders say, not what they do"
iran might be saying a lot, but if it wanted war, it would have been attacking, the same way that israel is attacking gaza, not threatening gaza.
even now when iran has responded to israel's attacks, you still seem to care more about iran's threats than iran's missiles.
-----
on your very long aside, you are mislabelling the positive sum behaviour as zero-sum.
you might see the point in putting at least equal blame between israel and hamas for the conflict with the positive sum descriptor. israel is in a mutually beneficial escalation and continuation of violence with hamas. an extreme right wing populace in israel is a win both for hamas and for israel. neither care about the palestinians, nor the israelis.
Calling for it and being actually able to do it are two very different things.
It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to.
> It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to.
Since they conducted decades of terrorism against Israel the USA and our allies a more apt example would be a person who repeatedly stabbed our friends is trying to get a bomb that could kill us all.
It's amazing to me how people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to people who literally led terrorist attacks against their country. To people who would stone gay people and punish women for the crime of rape. But won't give a similar benefit of doubt to the people opposing them. Who won't consider that, maybe, just maybe, the stuff you read on the internet isn't the whole truth.
I'm going to play a childish game with you: who started it first?
> Who won't consider that, maybe, just maybe, the stuff you read on the internet isn't the whole truth.
Are you saying people on the internet lie?
You can say that the CIA. Not Israel. But again that's a child's game just like you said.
How many Jews conducted suicide bombings in Germany after the holocaust?
We moved on, I can't say forgive and forget but we go to Germany and Austria. We talk and we live.
> Are you saying people on the internet lie?
Yep. And exaggerate and simplify the wrong things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb for others who haven't heard the term
Even if it just damages the centrifuges, as far as I see it, it would just delay their enrichment process, severely less than total destruction of their underground base.
Centrifuges. They got them via the A. Q. Khan network. We learned about if circa 2005 from Qaddaffi who gave up his to secure peace and his safety (and it didn't turn out well for him because Obama did not respect the gentleman's deal Qaddaffi had with Bush).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP
Also, each B2 can carry 2 MOPs making it a better platform than a C-130, and that isn't even taking the stealth of the platform into account
Wow. That is amazing. 60,000 lbs. combined.
The IDF has the F-15I which has a centerline hard point rated for 5,000lb load. That's immense for a fighter but a magnitude too low for the MOP.
There are a variety of smaller US penetrating bombs that the F-15 can handle, but they don't have the mass and structure to penetrate as deeply.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1lb8mkc/iran...
Source:
i was listening to Al Jazeera, one of the DC flaks they interviewed gave an upper estimate of the facility depth as 1000 ft. The conventional device can go to something like 60m or 200 ft. 6 devices were dropped, they would have to have everything, including geology with repeated strikes on the same point, be perfect to get past 1000 feet, and then they probably would not destroy the whole facility. As far as I know, they don't even have a good map of the layout.
hence, the only real option is a nuclear weapon. this is absolutely being considered inside the pentagon. our government is psychotic. a 1 kt nuclear weapon (laughably small, hiroshima was 15 kt) is 73x more powerful than a 30,000 lb bomb. they would be like, well, it's an underground explosion! The world will forgive us. it's so crafty and smart to use a nuke to stop a nuke (that doesn't exist).
https://x.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1935741526191100181
"The effectiveness of GBU-57s has been a topic of deep contention at the Pentagon since the start of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were briefed that perhaps only a tactical nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Fordow because of how deeply it is located."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/trump-caution-...
Also 1000ft is an upper estimate, right? It's certainly possible the MOPs were sufficient.
If you ever engage with what Daniel Ellsberg said, or US plans in north korea or vietnam, you’d know just how close the US comes to actual use in war. It’s never off the table. They are currently concerned with peer competition with China. There is likely a faction that would propose to attempt to show american strength on an unarmed target just like we did with Japan.
However at this juncture i’m starting to think this is all a show and they only care about the optics. Iran has already moved its equipment out of Fordow. However if the Iran war continues, expect things to get increasingly ugly.
> It included a strike on the heavily-fortified Fordo nuclear site, according to Trump, which is located roughly 300 feet under a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran. It's a move that Israel has been lobbying the U.S. to carry out, given that only the U.S. has the kind of powerful "bunker buster" bomb capable of reaching the site. Known as the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), the bomb can only be transported by one specific U.S. warplane, the B-2 stealth bomber, due to its immense 30,000 pound weight.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/21/nx-s1-5441127/iran-us-strike-...
Tin foil hat engaged: For all we know special forces detonated plastic explosives deep on site after doors were blown off.
More seriously: Nothing has been confirmed except a Truth Social post.
Can I say again how deeply silly this munition is? What's special about a GBU-57 isn't its explosive force. It's that the bomb casing is made out of special high-density ultra-heavy steel; it's deliberately just a super heavy bomb with a delayed fuse. It is literally like them dropping cartoon anvils out of the sky.
From what I've read, the idea is that they keep dropping bombs into the same bomb-hole that previous sorties left, each round of bombs drilling deeper into the structure.
Honestly, I'd rather you not. For those who are more personally familiar with warfare and combat operations, consistently describing any sort of bomb as "silly" is childish and inaccurate to the point of making me wonder if there's an ulterior motive with your description.
This is not "Looney Tunes".
If it is silly and it works, then it is not silly. If I remember correctly you have good cryptography skills. Rectothermal/rubber hose cryptoanalysis is quite silly too, but breaks AES,RSA,ECC and post quantum crypto schemes in 30 seconds.
I wonder how practical this part is.
I just realised that this bomb is not the same as the so called Mother of all bombs, which by the way has so far only been used once also by trump. That's the gbu 43. Why did they find it necessary to build an even bigger bomb? I wonder if they anticipated strikes on the me.
As to your other point iran seems to have a decent level of education. Building an entire home grown nuclear program under sanctions is impressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflet
> A camouflet, in military science, is an artificial cavern created by an explosion; if the resulting structure is open to the surface it is called a crater.[1]
US is developing a new generation of purpose-built deep penetration bombs that are a fraction of the size of the GBU-57.
I am sure the materials science aspects have come along since ww2, as has delivery technology, but I'd say how it goes fast, hits accurately and explodes is secondary to making a case survive impact and penetrate.
I would posit shaped charges could be amazing in this, if you could make big ones to send very high energy plasma out. I'm less sure depleted uranium would bring much to the table.
(Not in weapons engineering, happy to be corrected)
I was guessing either tungsten or depleted uranium, as for APDS, but the bomb's average density is only about 5 g/cc (14 tonnes in 3.1 m³). Length of 6.2 m times 5 tonnes per cubic meter gives a sectional density of 31 tonnes per square meter, which is about 15 meters of dirt. So Newton's impact depth approximation would predict a penetration depth one fourth of the reported 60-meter depth.
I don't know how to resolve the discrepancy. The plane wouldn't fly if the bomb weighed four times as much. Maybe most of the bomb's mass is in a small, dense shaft in the middle of the bomb, which detaches on impact?
This seems to assume that the weapon would penetrate until it displaced an equal amount of dirt by mass, which seems like nonsense. Why would that be the case?
Shape can change it to be arbitrarily bad; 14 tonnes of 5-micron-thick Eglin steel foil spread over a ten-block area wouldn't penetrate anything, just gently waft down, although it could give you some paper cuts. I suspect it can't make it much better, except in the sense of increasing sectional density by making the bomb longer and thinner, which we already know the results of.
Velocity doesn't enter into Newton's impact depth approximation at all. It does affect things in real life, but you can see from meteor craters that it, too, has its limits.
Target characteristics, no idea, but in a fast enough impact, everything acts like a gas. It's only at near-subsonic time scales that condensed-matter phenomena like elasticity come into play. Even at longer time scales the impact can melt things. This of course comes into conflict with the design objective of the bomb acting solid, so that it penetrates the soil instead of just mixing into it, and can still detonate when it comes to rest. I feel like buried plates of the same metal would have to be able to deflect it? And there are plenty of other high-strength alloys.
The bomb would naturally contain large kinetic energy because it moves at orbital velocities, around 8 kilometres per second (26,000 ft/s; Mach 24) in orbit and 3 kilometres per second (9,800 ft/s; Mach 8.8) at impact. As the rod reenters Earth's atmosphere, it would lose most of its velocity, but the remaining energy would cause considerable damage. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.[13] These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster.[12][14] As the name suggests, the 'bunker buster' is powerful enough to destroy a nuclear bunker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment?useskin=ve...
It's not entirely home grown if they were part of the NPT is it? Signing the NPT (a pinky promise not to develop weapons) means other countries then help you develop nuclear energy, which of course has a lot of overlap to weapons tech...
This isn't a just cause and it's not even a war. It's state sanctioned terror. I don't know it has ism in it.
Australian legal opinion says it's unlikely a credible defence in international law exists for this attack. It may redefine the norms for (un)lawful acts by the state, other states, weak and powerful will undoubtedly reflect on this.
It's also being claimed a success. Words like "obliterated" used. Time tends to tell a story there. I think it's a little too soon to say how successful these strikes were, tactically or strategically.
The international community has known for a while that USA and Israel are both belligerent nations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#U...
My expectation is that it was 3 rounds of 2 MOPs, hedging bets and potentially cresting a larger hole than drilling a hole one bomb at a time.
What Iran does next depends on the extent of the damage. It could be nothing. It could be a token response. It could be escalation.
But so far Iran has been the only rational actor in this region. Iran has been attacked with justification. Anytime someone says "preemptive strike" they mean "attack without justification". Their responses have been measured, rational, justified and proportionate.
When Israel tried to previously escalate the conflict with Iran and drag the US into war with Iran, Iran just didn't take the bait. And this is despite Israel assassinating government officials, bombing Iranian embassies and bombing Iran for absolutely no reason.
Either I'm misunderstanding (or misreading) something, or at least one of these sentences accidentallied a negation.
> including one from Iran who complained bitterly about how women were treated in her country but who did get the opportunity to get an advanced education
At best everyone is repeating the same propaganda talking points, whether US or Iranian (though most of us are from Western countries, so it skews heavily on one side). The Internet is an echo chamber of ill-informed opinions.
I would argue that the best voices to listen to about such matters are the academic historians that focus on the region involved, and who've studied in great detail the evolution of the region over time, how crises were resolved in the past, and who therefore have an informed intuition for the current state of the region. Furthermore, because they are academics they are practiced in objectivity -- the ability to look at horrifying situations with fascination rather than disgust.
But such experts tend to be ignored for two reasons: they generally aren't charismatic enough to get attention, and "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it; those who do know history are doomed to watch others repeat it". This might seem rather gloomy. It is precisely the same level of gloom with which we would watch any slow-moving natural phenomena threaten life on Earth, for example. Like seeing a nearby supernova explode, knowing that one of it's nuetrino jets will eventually rotate and hit us within 100 years. The mass and momentum of geopolitics is enormous and almost impossible to change, with or without understanding.
So, we chat with each other, armchair quarterbacking this game in which no-one really has control.
1. Will Iran escalate, stay-the-course, or yield more in negotiations? Or take some other action I haven't thought of.
2. If Iran escalates, how far will it go?
3. If Iran does a token retaliation without major escalation, but refuses to give up its remaining nuclear program, what happens? Will the Israeli's be satisfied with a 2-4 year delay in Iran's program or will they continue low-grade attacks for the foreseeable future?
4. If Iran yields in negotiations, how far will they go? Will the agree to cease enrichment? If so, will they try to cheat? Or will the US accept some amount of enrichment and end up with a variant of JCPOA?
5. Do you think something else will happen not covered above?
6. What will the situation be in 10 years? 25 years?
If there’s anything to that statement, things are likely to remain messy.
We already pulled the “they have WMDs” card, despite significant credibility problems.
We have a completely inexperienced 22 year old in charge of terrorism prevention at a time when any act of terrorism against the US would be a nightmarish scenario for escalation.
To me it looks as though we sent the invitation and left a note that the front door is unlocked.
The thing people seem to not recognize is: There's basically three countries on the planet capable of actually waging war in the 21st century (US, and Russia/China barely). Every other country is just a proxy for one of these three; their domestic capabilities look more like "throwing a tantrum" than actual war. Israel can't wage war without the US. Iran can't wage war without China/Russia. Currently, the superpower contribution to this fight is just dropping some bombs and diverting a few crates of AK-47s.
There's zero capability for long-term war here. But, there's also too much face-saving for negotiations or concessions to happen. So, the fire mostly quenches into embers; like the middle east has always been.
It's cheaper to build low precision rockets/drones than the Israeli interceptors, so the war _could_ swing in Iran's favor in the long term.
Additionally, Iranians aren't rising up because they don't want to be seen as being controlled by foreigners, but once the war stops, the Iranian regime will have to answer to its citizens. This means the mullahs have no incentive to stop.
In the opposite direction but with the same outcome, the just-barely-enough aid that Ukraine has received after being invaded by Russia, has demonstrated that it's foolish for countries to give up their own nuclear weapons, on the understanding that a friendly superpower will protect them.
This has been a very bad decade of events for incentivizing nuclear non-proliferation. I hate it!
Imagine that Iran already had 10 nuclear bombs and the US bombed the production sites with B2s. What would Iran do? They can't drop a nuke on the US, and even if they could, that would just ensure their destruction.
Of course, one could argue that Iran is not rational and that it would nuke NYC even if it meant being destroyed as a country. But if we're assuming that they are irrational, then that's all the more reason to get rid of their weapons, even if it meant taking casualties.
And note that the same calculation applies with Iran vs. Israel. If Israel attacks Iran conventionally, Iran cannot escalate to nuclear without also getting destroyed (since Israel has a larger arsenal).
Moreover, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, actually demonstrates the uselessness of nuclear weapons. Yes, NATO and the US were initially deterred because of fears of Russian escalation, but we've continued to cross "red-lines" in arming Ukraine without escalation (tanks, F16, missile attacks on Russian soil, etc.). I'm pretty confident that Europe at least will continue to support Ukraine with ever more powerful weapons without fear of Russia's nuclear threats.
In your hypothetical, we're sending B2s to drop bombs on their production sites. In the reality, we would not do that, for the same reasons that we are not sending B2s to drop bombs on North Korea's production sites.
But these kind of events--Israel defanging Hezbollah, US destroying nuclear sites--should change our priors. And it might change priors in Iran too. Until we actually sent B-2s in, Iran didn't know whether we ever would. They might have held out hope that we were bluffing--that we would never risk a $2 billion plane (not to mention a crew) on bombing a site that only sets back the program a couple of years.
Now that the US has done it, what's to stop us from doing it again later? Why bother spending so much effort on a program that gets blown up every few years? Maybe they'll just try to hide it better, but can they really rely on not having intelligence leaks, given the massive intelligence failures of the past few months?
And North Korea is not a great example. Even if it's true that their nuclear program has deterred us, they bought it at an enormous cost: North Korea is completely isolated. Iran would like to get rid of the current sanctions and start integrating into the rest of the world. Even if the regime doesn't care about its people, it still wants aircraft parts and oil revenue. The US and Israel would be fine if Iran continued to slowly rebuild its nuclear program, as long as it remained under sanctions. They can just wait five years and bomb again. But is that really a victory for Iran?
My point is that these events might cause Iran to re-evaluate the cost/benefits of their current strategy. They might decide that rushing to build a nuclear bomb is not worth the very large costs.
But if this were the conventional wisdom, I'd say that it's clearly right, and you're doing 5d chess to avoid looking it in the face.
Ukraine didn't have nukes. Would they have been invaded if they had nukes? Unclear. Maybe. Maybe not.
Taiwan doesn't have nukes. China wants to control Taiwan so, so bad. But, they're staying at a distance for now. Why? Taiwan is an extremely valuable economic ally of the rest of the world. No one wants to disrupt the status quo. We're too interconnected.
Iraq was reported to have nukes back in the 00s, and this was a reason why the US invaded them. We now know, they never had nukes. Maybe there were leaders in the US who knew this at the time, and just outright lied. But, if not: nukes did not protect them from being rubbleized by the US military industrial complex.
Poland doesn't have nukes. Russia isn't going to touch them, despite bordering deep Russian ally Belarus. What makes them so different from Ukraine? NATO. Political alliances. Ukraine didn't make political alliances. No one gave any thought to Ukraine before and even after Crimea; they were always just a weirdly dysfunctional and corrupt ex-Soviet country that no one cared about. Poland is different; they played ball with the west.
North Korea does have nukes, but they don't really have any significant or interesting way of using them. They could hit SK and Japan, but that's about it. We leave them alone. Why? Well, maybe nukes. But moreso: they're chill. They don't have external ambition. They can barely take care of themselves. They aren't calling for the rubblezation of their enemies anymore. Its not the nukes that keep them safe; its the reality that they're kinda playing ball with the rest of the world, in their own way.
Nukes probably help, but the far more likely guarantor of sovereignty is to be valuable to the rest of the world. Have a democratic government. Communicate. Trade. Address corruption. The main thing that Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, 1950s Vietnam, Syria, Libya, etc all have in common is that they're all backward, isolationist countries that never wanted to join up on the global stage, for either side. NK is the only one that's really managed to stay that way mostly unscathed.
Generally interesting comment, but this particular thing is faux uncertainty, I think. The answer is clearly no.
The way North Korea is using their nukes is by not being invaded by their neighborhood rivals.
Attacking North Korea means millions of starving brainwashed uneducated refugees flooding into China. China will make any deal to avoid that nightmare, that (and Seoul’s destruction) is why no one bothers with North Korea.
The incentives for having a nuclear program have not changed. Ukraine did not have nukes. Crimea, as a part of Ukraine. Syria. Iraq. Afghanistan. Vietnam. Libya. None of these countries had nukes. They paid for it.
What happened today isn't only not a "massive" change to the status quo, as you seem to think it is. Its so much less significant than what happened to the rest of those countries I just listed. Yet, you used the word "massive". Why? I have no idea.
Iran did not learn any new lessons yesterday. Nothing they didn't already know. The US does not want them to have nukes. We've done everything short of boots on the ground to stop them from having them. They should still want them. They're correct, in the defense of their territorial sovereignty, to want them. But, we'll keep stopping them. That's how it was in the 2000s, the 2010s, its how it is the 2020s, and it's how it will be in the 2030s and 2040s. They keep trying, we keep stopping them. The incentives haven't changed. Nothing has changed. Yet you doomers keep thinking this is the end of the world or its WW3. It isn't.
If anything has changed: Iran just learned that something which took them a decade of development, cost hundreds of lives, and billions of dollars, was stopped by a couple planes from a country half a world away at basically no cost to us, without barely a thought or care. Fox News was tracking these B2s on ADSB a day before they hit Iran; it didn't matter. That's how ahead the US is. The asymmetry here should scare the shit out of them, and the world; that they will never have a conventional nuclear program because they're so unbelievably outmatched and outgunned that if our President has one bad nights sleep he could just wipe out half their country, half of any country, with no congressional authorization, no checks, no balances, just launch a plane and they're dead. Maybe this pushes them to non-conventional means of obtaining nukes; but it shouldn't significantly change their desire for wanting one in the first place. They've always wanted nukes.
I don't think you're disagreeing with me, you're just comparing to a more recent status quo.
Nuclear non-proliferation was based on the idea that small countries didn't need their own nuclear weapons, because they could ally with a superpower / bloc with nuclear weapons, and piggy-back on those superpowers not wanting to go to war, to avoid nuclear confrontation.
It is true that some countries, like Israel and North Korea, never bought that idea, and went ahead and got their own nukes.
That those countries who didn't buy into non-proliferation have fared better in the last couple decades than the ones on your list who have been attacked with little repercussion, is exactly the point.
Ukraine was willing to give up its nukes decades ago, now it's clear they shouldn't have. Iran was willing to enter into a non-proliferation agreement a decade ago, now it's clear they shouldn't.
But this is a much worse equilibrium than if we could have actually made non-proliferation work. Now every small country should clearly be trying to build nuclear weapons, if they can. And I think that's bad.
There are dozens of examples of denuclearized countries that are, today, at near-zero risk of being attacked or invaded, possibly because of their political and economic relationship with the United States. Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, many others, these are all countries that do not have nukes, have a great political and economic relationship with the US, and are currently at 0% risk of attack or invasion by our shared enemies (ok, you can put Taiwan at slightly higher than 0%).
Ukraine never had this kind of relationship. They tried to play both sides with their denuclearization agreement; that's what screwed them. Other countries picked a side when they denuclearized.
Statistically: There are, I believe, zero examples of a US political or economic ally being attacked or invaded, regardless of their nuclearization status, post-Vietnam. The only example of anyone who is remotely close to this is Taiwan, and even that's very far away from igniting.
I'm sorry, are you from the past? You literally listed Canada which Trump threatened with invasion.
The U.S. has no stable economic relationship with any country under the current administration and won't regain the trust for years or decades to come.
There's just these two quite different non-economic relations - not relationships - Israel and Russian Federation. The latter may even be Trump's hallucination but I'm giving him a benefit of the doubt. He finds common language with warmongering dictators.
But it's also just how it is that the biggest countries already had huge nuclear stockpiles. I'm not convinced that small countries trying to build them also is a huge contributor to that base level of risk. But we've been surviving in that state of the world for about three-quarters of a century now.
It can't be the case that being open-eyed about the current state of things is "doomer", right? I'm not speculating impending future doom, just describing current conditions as I see them.
> Dan is a congressman, and what journalist Helen really wants from him is information. She’s particularly interested in a “dirty bomb”—particularly, whether the rumors of one exploding in New Orleans are real, or merely fabricated to advance a war between America and Iran. Dan doesn’t answer, instead choosing to leave. It’s all vague, but it gives the viewer a chance to piece some details together: It was likely the bomb and the escalation of a war between America and Iran that led to the creation of the silos.
https://time.com/7206478/silo-season-2-finale-explained/
I have no way of knowing if my friend is correct about this, but with the conflicting news broadcasts in the USA the situation is as confusing as hell. Off topic, but I have started finding news shows on the Internet from different countries like Singapore to try to figure out some semblance of truth about the world.
Your friend's statement, that religious minorities in Iran are safe as long as they don't protest, is basically like a situation of domestic abuse.
An abuser might claim their partner is free and happy, as long as they follow the rules and don't speak out. The home may appear peaceful to outsiders, but this "peace" is maintained through fear, control, and the constant threat of violence for any perceived transgression.
Isn’t it exactly like the present day USA? Where ethnic minorities can be taken out by masked militia and disappear in a concentration camp without any due process for any reason?
I can't tell if you are even serious to draw the comparison, if you get disappeared in Iran there is literally nothing to help you.
Perhaps you have a point but it can only be one of degree! Or perhaps we can try to think of a single state that does not maintain itself through violence?
It is only somewhat safe for token minorities, tiny pockets of remaining Jews, native Christians: Armenians and Assyrians, but not Parsis (Persians who escaped Islamization) or Mandeans (an ancient gnostic sect)
Non-native Christians (i.e. Iranians who converted to Christianity) are severely persecuted. Same for various heterodox sects / offshoots of Islam like Baháʼís, Ismailis, Ahmadis, Yazidis, Shabakis, Yarasanis, etc.
Large non-token minorities (like Azeris, Kurds, Balochi, Arabs) are persecuted. Non Shias are unable to get a government jobs. According to some demographic estimations Persians per se are a minority in Iran, which would make it an apartheid state
Gays are forced to undergo gender reassignment surgeries
Women …
> A liberal *Israeli* friend told me several times that Iran ____
Thinking critically, what makes your so-called "liberal" Israeli friend an authority on Iran? Are they a recent Jewish immigrant from Iran? Do they speak Farsi? Are they an academic researching Iran? Do they serve in military intelligence or the Mossad (or not-Mossad)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iran#Religious...
Pre-1979, per the 1976 census, Iran had a Jewish population of 62,258 (0.2%). Post-revolution it immediately fell to ~9k, where it has remained - at least until the last census in 2016 (0.0% representation).
While Christian representation didn't decline by the same amount, it took a sharp decline as well. Pre revolution (1976) saw a Christian representation of around 0.5%. 30 years later (2006 census) it was 0.2%.
What conclusions you should draw from that are open to interpretation... and when it comes to life in the Middle East and North Africa, you can also draw relative comparisons (is Iran worse or better for these groups?). But it's usually not a good sign when the population of an ethic or religious minority takes a sharp and sudden decline.
The Iranian Jews had to immigrate via another countries, I guess via Europe. Also boys had first to serve in the army to earn right to travel outside Iranian borders
On the other hand, Jews had to leave the Muslim countries both in Northern Africa and the Middle East, with the total Jewish population there shrinking from hundreds of thousands to hundreds. Compared to that, Iran, from which only 70-90% of Jews left, looks not that bad. However, there were testimonies that members of Jewish families aren't allowed to leave the country all together, so I'm not sure if everyone is staying there at will.
Added emphasis
Under such regimes, the hope is that a sprinkle of people here and there come to know Christ. They immediately have eternal life with forgiveness of sins. Over time, as they share Christ and His Word, more lives will transform as a side effect of the sanctification process. As they do, and people witness it, hearts and minds might change over time in a way that changes the whole country (or its leadership).
But will that happen? I doubt it. A country like America likes authoritarian regimes that like to listen to America. So Iranian things in the best interest of America would be the same theocracy but docile to America at least in the near future (or worse a full fledged military dictatorship which they anyway installed once).
However I just hope/dream (and it's too much of a hope) for the sake of Iranian people - it ends up getting a democracy after all (maybe).
However there is one thing clear - there is no rule based foreign relations, business, diplomacy anymore in this post truth world of ours. It's plain simple - you look after your own hind lest you find someone is at the door wanting to take it; might be an ally just as well.
A side note: I can't thank four of my country's ex PMs [0] enough that they ensured we had nukes inspite of stringent sanctions from other nations which ironically, among them, almost all already had nukes :D
The point is - we wish there were no nukes in our heating beautiful world; but tough luck, so you better get your own and get it soon.
[0] esp. Indira Ghandhi; also, probably the only head of sate that actually succeeded in "selling freedom" thing. Something America specialises in and uses as a premise to routinely reduce various parts of the world to rubble. A positive outcome of such endeavours - its defence industry getting push from it and of course it goes about trying to re-build it, giving push to other of its industries, half or quarter way and then finds other sundry places to subject to this routine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2020/01/03/...
The US assassinated Soleimanis and Iran reponded with direct middle attacks on US bases:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Martyr_Soleimani
Iranian activity agains the US goes back decades and has escalated recently:
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/06/19/iranian-and-iranian-...
Other than a brief thaw in relations in 2015 there is nothing that would suggest that Iran’s anti-US rhetoric is for domestic consumption and for show.
As far as I'm aware, you don't get to project military force 8000 miles away and then complain about killed soldiers. Which has been the US' favourite past time since the 60s.
Well, it's a good thing Trump completely neutralized retaliatory action against US troops. /s
One of the arguments against limited strikes against the Iranians was that it would be simply stirring up the hornets nest and things spiraling out of control.
The truth is it doesn't benefit us at all, we simply do it because pro-Israel lobbies have a ton of power. Trump even diverted resources from Ukraine for this, and that war is really about US hegemony even though there's a moral aspect to it too.
Exactly my thoughts. We were absolutely blessed to have been developing our own nuclear capabilities at a time of intense international scrutiny. We were sanctioned to oblivion by the West for that until they realized (after Pakistan too developed their nukes, comfortably) that you can't simply ignore the elephant in the room. And we paid for it dearly too (with the assassinations of leaders in our nuclear programme).
At this point, it should be expected of any rational self-serving sovereign nation that they should develop nukes, especially if they have a record of historical non-aggression. South Korea, modern Japan, the EU (especially those in direct threat of Russia like Poland)... I don't expect Germany to grow a pair to not rely on the US, any time in the near future.
I dunno. America seems to like Norway, and they don't seem particularly authoritarian.
The way through seems limited to:
- ground invasion - nuclear annihilation - regime change (no guarantee of success)
If the regime change doesn't work, the options are horrible. And remember that the current Iran regime is the result of a US backed regime change, which allowed radical elements to mobilize hatred against the US.
Trump getting Nobel - yes, knowing who all the Swedes have given it to I won't be surprised at all.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-n-nuclear-watchdog-says-0510491...
That's the whole article.
If we blow up a place filled with enriched uranium, shouldn't there be an obvious spike in off-site radiation levels, as the uranium settles to the ground?
Meaning, isn't this damning evidence that there was no enriched uranium?
From Reuters [2]: > Hassan Abedini, deputy political head of Iran's state broadcaster, said Iran had evacuated the three sites some time ago. > "The enriched uranium reserves had been transferred from the nuclear centres and there are no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots," he told the channel.
1. https://www.newsweek.com/iran-nuclear-strikes-us-donald-trum... 2. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-launch...
Usually subjective opinions are left for opinion-pieces, which that article isn't.
Another example from the same article, first they write:
> "The strikes were a spectacular military success," Trump said in a televised address. "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated."
Then afterwards they write:
> However, Mohammad Manan Raisi, a lawmaker for Qom, near Fordow, told the semi-official Fars news agency the facility had not been seriously damaged.
That's how real journalism works, find people with perspectives from both sides of the coin, and let them say theirs. Obviously one of them are correct, but it's not Reuter who will put down the foot and tell you what to believe.
See for example https://www.tomrosenstiel.com/essential/the-elements-of-jour...
No one claimed this. I'm merely stating the obvious that no one is 100% impartial here, and Reuters is reporting based on what they've been able to verify.
> The best of journalism is about presenting verifiable facts
The fact is that person X said Y, and that's what they're reporting. It's not original reporting about what the quote is about, it's a quote from a person, and that they're sharing that quote means they've verified that it was said by that person.
Not saying Reuters does a particularly bad job at that btw.
Both sides are trying to goad everyone into their side, this is obvious. But again, it is not up to independent news to report for one side more than the other, this is why quotes from both sides are unedited, as it should be if you're for independent news.
> with one objectively correct answer and one crazy one
None of this is happening with the discussions and news-reporting from today and yesterday, it's all propaganda designed to make you feel one way or another. There is no "objective truth" to be found here, just two(three) nations who want to destroy each other, having a competition who can sound the most "reasonable" in order to justify whatever comes next.
Of course there's objective truth here. This is a technical question with an uncontroversial technical answer (and that quoted physicist told us the answer).
> no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots
is a accurate picture of Iran's intention behind moving the uranium or not, is not something an expert of any sector could say for sure, unless they somehow have insider information. Not sure why you'd believe so.
It's possible (though not guaranteed) that they simply relocated the enriched uranium before the attack.
[0] https://x.com/thenewarea51/status/1936391071430308207
That one was counterintelligence deliberately placed in OSINT to confuse Iran. The B-2's that flew west over CONUS in daylight, in plain view, were decoys on a wrong timing.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-u-s-strik... ("U.S. Strike on Iran Began With a Ruse")
The relevant question is: Why was it necessary to bomb Iran right now?
What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all.
I suspect that after their nuclear program was discovered and set back they fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy and convinced themselves they could repurpose it as leverage. But they are a theocratic regime and their messaging (whether genuine or not) made that a non-viable option in reality.
This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you? Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first if you can't destroy their capability by other means. What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
I feel very conflicted about what's happening.
On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
> What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
This is the key. People talk some crazy stories about Iran being a theocratic state whose life mission is destroying Israel but the fact is they don't want to end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat.
And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US. So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not.
Syria was embroiled and toppled by Islamic Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham backed by Turkey. Libya was due to civil war. Several of these conflicts were funded by Iran as well.
You can go down the list. Please study at least some basics on the region.
> So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Theocracies can be unpredictable. Also they could provide dirty bombs to their proxies in the region.
- Libya was bombed primarily by France and then other NATO countries for no good reason. And from a functioning dictatorship it is a failed state.
- Syria was invaded by Turkey/US right after the civil war started.
In the world we all live in you need to have powerful deterrents so that the US/France/UK/NATO will not dare to bomb you for whatever reason they feel "justified" to do.
In an extreme, I think every country should have a lot of nukes so other countries can mind their own business.
The problem is that countries tend to assume that the neighbors are also their business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_Libyan_financing_in_th...
Right. Because nothing says "I can mind my own business." like nuclear weapons being at most one coup from being launched at someone, possibly you.
People thought nuclear weapons are a defensive deterrent but what war in Ukraine showed us they are actually offensive weapons that deter anyone from defending to strongly when you attack them with your conventional forces.
Both russia and USA used their nuclear weapons in that manner for the last few decades. It's time to call the thing that quacks what it is, a duck.
You're saying not all countries should be able to have powerful weapons just because there might be a coup. Who decides that? You? Me? A random guy on the street? A random bureaucrat from a random country?
There are very few people who think they can win a nuclear exchange. And somehow I don't think a random guy in Africa or the Middle East is so sure about it that it risks launching nukes at its neighbor(s).
Of course. How is that controversial?
> Who decides that? You?
Of course. I decide what I believe to be right. And in practice the countries that get to have nuclear weapons are the countries that got nuclear weapons. Not because they deserve it or should have it. Just because they got it. Which makes France, USA and Israel some of the countries that get to have nukes and Iran one of the countries that don't get to have nukes.
> There are very few people who think they can win a nuclear exchange.
You mistake humans for rational actors. Have you heard what the stance of russia is for example? "What's the use for the world if there's no russia in it." Basically if they can't do what they want, they think world deserves to get nuked into oblivion.
Take the US for example: if the president, secretary of defense and probably the head of the joint chiefs decide it is OK to nuke half the planet because "reasons" - how is that different from a traditional coup?
> Which makes France, USA and Israel some of the countries that get to have nukes and Iran one of the countries that don't get to have nukes.
Power is always taken, never given. Following your rationale, Iran should do whatever to get its hands on some nukes real fast.
> Have you heard what the stance of Russia is for example?
Have you heard of peacocking? If it were actually true, they would have nuked the world way before probably me and you were born.
The comment didn't suggest that exactly.
> One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation?
Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership. They've probably figured out retaliation is a possibility here - if this is Israel's defence when they aren't even being threatened, imagine what they will do in their defence when the Iranians actually do something directly! Even if the Iranians are legitimately stupid at some level the campaign of missile strikes must have registered that they are vulnerable to missiles.
Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2). They are making trauma informed decisions, and can never be trusted to do so alone because it’s actual trauma.
The biggest myth is that Israel is a first world country but there’s no evidence of it. Buildings and infrastructure do not make you a first world country (behold China). Any country that is that brutal will never meet the criteria, it’s a third world country that is new and learning just like every other third world country.
Blood-thirst (blood-rage? They see red.) is an understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025. We need things to change over the next 20 years. They do not know how to manage life due to just how intense their historical trauma was. There’s no one over there with a cool head and clinically there wouldn’t be (how do you just act normal after the holocaust? You can’t.)
The failure of the Trump admin is unique and unlike any other administration. It is was once accepted that Israel is not level headed (again, not an insult, one cannot be balanced if one emerges through hellfire) and cannot dictate foreign policy. Trump just said “fuck it, go ahead traumatized child, do as you please” - this was pure insanity.
Love is protecting your brothers and sisters from themselves (my brothers keeper). The world did not get safer, where are the cooler heads in the room?
Because I lived there for 6 months during a study abroad I randomly ended up doing. I'd never had a Jewish or Muslim friend before going. Living there I had Palestinian and Jewish neighbors. I had to read lots of books on both sides of the topic and write papers on them. Along with deep conversations with both Israelis and Palestinians. Admittedly more with Israelis than Palestinians. Though I do have some fond memories of Palestinians.
The experience forced me out of my previously much more sheltered technology and American centric world view which is what I'd say was your somewhat average 16 year old American's viewpoint, if on the more liberal atheistic side at the time. I likely would've been convinced of the same things as yourself when I was younger and more naive and saw the headlines I do now.
That said, I'm not pro-Netanyahu or many of the things he does. He's a hardliner.
> Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2).
You're not wrong. They're also a resilient people. Remember it's not just WWII, but most Israeli's, their parents and grand parents have also grown up with constant war or thread of war.
It does affect psychology when many neighboring groups like Iran and Hamas not only want to destroy your state but also want to kill all Jews. That's their public official positions. It's not just rhetoric either as they routinely attack. Ultimately Palestinian leaders and political groups have never wanted peace with Israel from everything I've studied, and neither does Iran.
Finally Israel was making progress towards peace with the Abraham accords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords) which Trump helped negotiate. Some scholars I've read believe this is part of what led to Hamas's October 7th attacks as they would loose influence if Arab nations started making peace with Israel.
> Bloodthirst is understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025.
It's easy to throw such statements around. However, look at the state of most of the region. What Israel is doing is tame compared to some of the atrocities occurring but which don't make regular news.
this.
even though some Israel's actions are spooky (targeted-exploding walkytalkies?), they're at least designed to minimize civilian deaths (or at least they're trying)
But... Iran and their ilks (eg. Hamas)? they not only don't give a shit, but actively seek to kill civilians with maximum brutality (baby beheadings, killing & parading even with non-israeli bodies)
“Tame”
Either you have no respect for my eyes or brain or I am truly an idiot. Write blog articles explaining how what we see and hear is bullshit and post it here please, we’ll assess.
1200 != 50,000
But here is the true mind fuck, 1200 != even one innocent.
Barbaric != Tame
So we march people down from the North to the South, level the area, and then logistically starve them? Tame. Do you know how the Americans marched the Native Americans to death? We’re all fucking idiots to you right?
HN is just subset of society. You’ve got everyone here, including Israeli apologists. Plenty of Jewish developers too. You don’t have to live or die by your “team” when they are literally fucking wrong about this.
Your typical educated American does not even attempt to defend most American policy since the end of WW2 (there’s literally not a single right thing America did). Maybe we’re lucky that we get to have such clear heads about it finally, and I hope the same for those on the wrong side of history on this one, however long it takes.
When one realizes they were barbarically wrong is a true moment of personal and spiritual growth.
The definition of modern national pragmatism appears to be the following based on what so many apologists say:
2 wrongs == 1 right
(The only way this can be correct in anyone’s heart is if emotions have fully overtaken the person)
Let me fix that for you:
2 wrongs != 1 right
A population caught up in a horrible conflict. In part due to the choices of the leaders they've supported for decades now.
> I need a thorough explanation of the images I see out of there. What the hell is 50k dead and ghetto camp conditions?
They're the same tragedies as those from most of the other war torn areas in the region. I hate to say it, but Gaza is at the "risk of famine" while the Sudan and Yemen are in full on famine. There's also two orders of magnitude more civilians suffering in Sudan currently as well. Similarly in Yemen, which is being bombed routinely by Saudis and Americans which include innocent civilian deaths. I've not heard of one anti-Saudi protest by Muslims in the west in recent years.
Where's the constant Wester or Muslim outrage for the 100,000s or millions of civilian deaths directly caused by Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah or more throughout the region by extremist Islamists?
You can also find the recent videos of interviews with Palestinians where they praise and thank Trump for giving the food (GHF) while they curse Hamas for hoarding the food and using their children as war fodder.
Did the media also show you the videos of the Palestinians in Northern Gaza protesting Hamas for being terrorists and killing their children in March? Many of them understand who started and wanted the war. They call it war and blame Hamas.
Does that justify all the actions of Israel? No, but I also believe Israel also acts to prevent the worse from coming around. They supply water, food, and aid while the other military forces like Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc do not do that for their enemies civilians. They regularly provide bombing warnings and evacuation notices to civilians, unlike pretty much any other force in the region.
Does the IDF also have bad actors and commit war crimes as well? Yes, but most Israeli's don't want or support that.
> But here is the true mind fuck, 1200 != even one innocent.
Tell that to almost any nations at war. There's always civilian casualties. For the Israelis it's 1200 today, and in their experience it'll be another 1200 tomorrow, and 1200 the day after and so on if they did not attack back and remove Hamas. 50,000+ dead is terrible but the statistics of civilians to combatant casualties are similar to other conflicts in the region, despite Hamas being internationally known for using civilians as shields.
Where's the constant outrage for the 150,000 dead in Yemen due to the fighting there and the 227,000 dying of famine and the ghetto conditions there? The conflict in Palestine isn't that unique in the region except that the media covers Palestine far more. The double standards on display in the west are absurd and masterfully exploited by the Islamist extremists spearheaded by Iran.
I'm all for attacking Trump when justified, but given how Biden managed Gaza it is spectacularly unclear that we would expect a different outcome from Dems.
I don’t think Biden would have done it. Take the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, which happened in Trump’s first term. What stable President agitates a situation like that? He was uniquely allied with Netanyahu for awhile, and Netanyahu has exclaimed that Trump is the best friend Israel ever had:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-calls...
And Iran retaliated and actually some of it's missiles inflicted damage. We can only imagine what the damage would be if Isreal patiently waited for the Iran to feel read to attack Israel which it's always advertised as its goal. Also it already happened once. Nations of the region decided they are strong enough to attack Isreal and they did. It was bound to happen again and as the death toll in Isreal in the current conflict shows, despite pre-emptive strike damaging Iran's missile potential significantly, there's only so much you can do with defensive weapons.
In this specific context pre-emptive strike on leaders and long range attack capabilities is not perfidious, it's just about the only thing you can do that's not stupid.
[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-13/israel-strikes-on-ira... - "Why is this happening?"
Are you even arguing in good faith? Over the years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op9EFTPQhw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulXulltxXZg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V21yoWN_U3w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hLDjGdJC0Q
Bluster isn't a threat that the military are going to respond to. Imagine I used the word "credible" above if you want.
In my mind there is no doubt who the good guys are in that particular conflict. Iran started it decades ago for no reason other than religious hate, has kept it up until now and Iran is the one escalating.
An ongoing war that includes all of Iran proxies.
[1] https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/activities-of-saeed-iza...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
Reality is Israel is run by psychopaths who would be in jail if it weren't for their their cynical use of constant war as a misdirection.
Much like the US. And Russia. And numerous other countries, some of which are still pretending to be democratic.
The entire world order is built on greed, lies, narcissistic grandiosity, and violent murder at industrial scales.
That's not what this article says. To quote:
> Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.
> Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.
> Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.
You are not understanding what the article is saying, because you're mixing up different Palestinians. Palestine has a left wing party, the Palestine Authority, and a right wing party, Hamas. The Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, recognizes the state of Israel and wants a two-state solution that also establishes a Palestinian state. Hamas does not recognize the state of Israel and wants to destroy it. Netanyahu is against the Palestinian Authority because he's more against giving legitimacy to Palestinian statehood than he's against war. He funded Hamas to delegitimize Abbas/Palestinian statehood/two-state solution/peace.
President Abbas has a PhD in holocaust denial.
Calling the PA left wing isn't accurate. It's also bent on the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"The PA was founded following years of hostility. Secret meetings held in Norway in 1993 between the PLO and Israel led to the signing of the historic Declaration of Principles (the Oslo Accords), in which the two sides agreed to mutual recognition and terms whereby governing functions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967—would be progressively handed over to a Palestinian council."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palestinian-Authority
PA is controlled by Fatah, which is "centre-left" to "left-wing" per Wikipedia. If you disagree, edit Wikipedia and cite your sources.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah
Israeli police began investigating Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for fraud in 2016. Israeli courts indicted him for multiple cases of fraud in 2019.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu
Qatar has probably funded Hamas more than Iran and now the future Air Force One is a Qatari plane...
“Qatar has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level”
"Qatar has been a key financial supporter of the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, transferring more than $1.8 billion to Hamas over the years..."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_support_for_Hamas
What's wrong with this picture? (And I don't mean in the sense of a Futurama meme of Farnsworth saying "I don't want to live on this planet any more").
It’s very clear to me Israel has had some of the most retarded foreign policy experts for decades now. The truth is the same truth we have in the U.S, 70+ million that voted for Trump harbor a higher degree of racism that is near impossible to stop (will take generations). Israelis HATE Palestinians, and therefore they cannot make even the most obvious game theory choices on building better safety environments (finance and launch a multi decade campaign to uplift Gaza from poverty of mind, heart, and material - unless you are fucking racist and would rather live in conflict than EVER give an inch.)
Well, it's outcome of how they were treated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War
If everybody hates you anyways you eventually morph into the thing that deserves that hatred.
The difference isn't in brutality. It is in the word "Islamic". That is the core of the ideological hostility of the current Iranian government towards Israel.
For example, these ayatollahs, who have forgotten more about islam than any muslim I've ever discussed with has ever known, claim that women who refuse to cover up (it was really more burning hijabs and demonstrating) can't be executed according to islamic doctrine for that, if they were young and virgins. Sounds great.
Except what they decided what this "islamic doctrine" meant was to have them raped repeatedly by soldiers ... and THEN execute them. Virgin problem solved.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...
Oh here is the list of credentials of khamenei, the person in charge of that. But let me guess, you "know better" and "know" this somehow isn't islam. Of course, you aren't willing to do anything about it either ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei
Some highlights:
"Khamenei's education began at the age of four, by learning the Quran at Maktab;[7] he spent his basic and advanced levels of seminary studies at the hawza of Mashhad, under mentors such as Sheikh Hashem Qazvini and Ayatollah Milani. Then, he went to Najaf in 1957,[26] but soon returned to Mashhad due to his father's unwillingness to let him stay there. In 1958, he settled in Qom where he attended the classes of Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini.[7]"
You say that Muhammad 'used peace treaties as weapons of war, against Jews', but the historical record shows the complete opposite, and the full story makes your accusation look absurd.
The Banu Qurayza violated the Treaty of Medina during wartime, which was considered an act of treason in violation of the constitution agreed by all citizens of Medina, including the Banu Qurayza Jews.¹
They broke their treaty obligations by conspiring with attacking forces during the siege of Medina.
But here's the part that completely destroys your narrative: *The Banu Qurayza themselves appointed Sa'd ibn Mu'adh as their judge, and declared they would agree with whatever was his verdict.*²
They chose their own judge: Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, who was from the Aws tribe and had been their ally.
And the judgment? *The verdict for the Banu Qurayza was consistent with the Old Testament, specifically based on Deuteronomy 20:12-14.*³ Sa'd judged them to execution according to Jewish law, not Islamic law.
So let me get this straight: The Jews broke the treaty, they requested to be judged by their own ally, that ally judged them according to their own Torah, and somehow this becomes Muhammad "using peace treaties as weapons against Jews"?
This is the exact opposite of what you claimed. The Jews broke the treaty, chose their own judge, and were judged by their own law.
If someone gets such a well-documented historical event completely backwards while making inflammatory accusations, that tells you everything you need to know about the reliability of their other claims.
1. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford University Press, 1956). Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)
2. William Muir, The Life of Mahomet (Smith, Elder & Co., 1861), Vol. 3, Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).
3. Deuteronomy 20:12-14 (Hebrew Bible); Barakat Ahmad, Muhammad and the Jews (Vikas Publishing, 1979).
Surely you can cite one? As I haven't come across any that call for unrestricted violence against Jewish people.
Or any people, for that matter.
Stop imagining. Cite them.
What specific verses or doctrines are you referring to? Give us the exact citations.
Because once you do, I have a very simple question for you: If those verses mean what you think they mean, why didn't Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam and Muhammad's direct companion, know about them?
When Umar took Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 638 CE, instead of slaughtering Jews, he invited them back to a city they'd been banned from for 500 years under Christian rule. He protected their religious practices and established legal frameworks for their protection.
So either:
These verses don't exist or don't mean what you think, OR the second Caliph, who learned Islam directly from Muhammad, somehow didn't understand basic Islamic doctrine.
Which is it?
Put up or shut up. Cite the specific verses you're claiming exist, then explain why Muhammad's direct successor acted in the exact opposite way.
I have lived the last 44 years in Australia, the United Kingdom and now the United States, each of which have been victims of Islamic violence in different ways.
I understand you want me to cite specific hadiths, as I said earlier I think any Islamic scholar would already know which ones, so you’re not arguing in good faith. I want you to know I am familiar with the ‘no true scotsman’ fallacy and feel you will employ it. You have no right to demand anything from me.
As an Islamic scholar you are also familiar with the concept of dhimmis. I think the reason you didn’t mention them here is because you know Islam creating laws to treat others as second class citizens is shameful, and you did now acknowledge these because you are not arguing in good faith.
I won’t stop talking about Islamic violence because you demand I do so, you have no right to demand this of anyone and your personal beliefs deserve no special respect.
First, you claimed there are Islamic doctrines calling for violence against Jews. When I asked for citations, you suddenly can't provide any because "any Islamic scholar would already know." This is the academic equivalent of "my girlfriend goes to another school." If these doctrines are so obvious and pervasive, citing them should take you thirty seconds, not paragraphs of deflection.
Second, you accuse me of limiting the discussion when the exact opposite happened. You made a specific claim about anti-Jewish doctrines, I challenged it, and when you couldn't defend it, YOU tried to escape by broadening it to "Islamic violence globally." I actually expanded my challenge by saying I haven't found doctrines calling for unrestricted violence against Jewish people "or any people, for that matter." You're now misrepresenting the exchange because you can't handle either version of the challenge.
Third, you preemptively accuse me of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, but you're the one committing it. You claim "perpetrators of Islamic violence" cite these doctrines, but when pressed for specifics, you can't name them. That's you implying that anyone who doesn't commit violence isn't following "real" Islam, which is literally the No True Scotsman fallacy you're projecting onto me.
Fourth, you brought up dhimmis thinking it was devastating, but you just wrecked your own position. The dhimmi system was a legal framework for protection and coexistence, revolutionary for its time when other civilizations were practicing actual genocide. If Islam mandated killing Jews, why would it simultaneously create detailed legal protections for them? You literally cited evidence that contradicts your entire premise.
Fifth, your appeal to personal geography is irrelevant. Living in three countries doesn't make you knowledgable in Islam any more than living near hospitals makes you qualified to comment on surgery. You're using personal experience to avoid rigor, the exact opposite of truthful discourse.
Sixth, you claim I have "no right to demand" citations from you. In discussions in pursuit of truth, when you make factual claims, providing evidence isn't a courtesy, it's basic intellectual honesty. You don't get to make assertions about Islamic doctrine then hide behind wounded feelings when asked to support them.
Finally, you still haven't addressed Umar ibn al-Khattab. This isn't some minor historical figure, he's the second Caliph, Muhammad's direct companion, who conquered Jerusalem and immediately invited Jews back after 500 years of Christian expulsion. If Islamic doctrine mandates violence against Jews, then either:
a) these doctrines don't exist or don't mean what you claim, OR b) Muhammad's own companion fundamentally misunderstood basic Islamic teaching (which you seem to be more privvy to, despite your lack of citation)
You cannot escape this logical knot you've tied around yourself. Every byte of text you write avoiding this question proves you know your position is indefensible.
This isn't about silencing you, it's about holding you accountable for claims you cannot substantiate.
Regardless of the above, the Islamic Republic of Iran calls itself Islamic and takes the velayat-e-faqih system, developed by Khomeini, as divinely inspired.
You just admitted that the specific system of ayatollah rule has 'no core doctrine' supporting it. You acknowledged that this particular form of clerical authority is an innovation that doesn't exist in foundational Islamic teachings. Then you say Khomeini 'developed' velayat-e-faqih as a new system.
So by your own admission: core Islamic doctrine doesn't support this specific form of clerical rule by ayatollahs; and that Khomeini had to 'develop' (i.e., invent) the velayat-e-faqih framework. So, Iran's system is based on this modern Shia innovation, not established Islamic governance models.
But your original claim was that Iran's hostility toward Israel stems from 'Islamic' ideological doctrine. You can't have it both ways, either Iran's policies flow from broadly accepted Islamic teachings, or they flow from Khomeini's specific 20th-century innovation that most Muslims reject.
You've just proven that Iran's system represents one minority sect's modern political invention, not mainstream Islamic doctrine.
You don't need to be an Islamic scholar to know there are two major branches: Sunni and Shia. If you don't know this basic distinction, you shouldn't be making claims about 'Islam' generally. If you do know it, then you're being disingenuous trying to pass off one minority Shia innovation as representative of all Islam.
a) considers itself Islamic, b) it is indeed ruled by scholars of Islam, c) bases its policy and politics on Islam.
You say that they are basically heretics and that the majority of Muslims don't agree with them. So what. I haven't said that all Muslims want to destroy Israel for religious reasons.
If I want to be extra precise, the Islamic Republic of Iran is compelled by Islam as of its own understanding to destroy Israel.
And given that there is no central authority in Islam that would issue binding declarations on what is Islam and what is Heresy, this is basically the norm in the Islamic world. Every nation and community practices Islam as it understands it, which means quite a lot of internal diversity.
Your new claim: Iran follows 'Islam as of its own understanding' and there's no central authority to define what's Islamic.
So you've just admitted that Iran's version isn't representative of Islam generally and that there's no authoritative way to call their interpretation 'Islamic'. That every community 'practices Islam as it understands it'.
This demolishes your original point even further. If anyone can interpret Islam however they want with no central authority, then Iran's actions tell us nothing about 'Islamic' doctrine, they only tell us about Iran's political choices wrapped in religious language.
By your own logic, I could point to: Indonesia, the largest Muslim country, which is democratic and has peaceful relations with Israel. Or the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, who've normalized relations with Israel. Jordan, Egypt: these have peace treaties with Israel.
I could point to these and say they represent 'Islam as of their own understanding' just as validly as Iran does.
You've essentially argued that Iran's interpretation is just one of many possible interpretations with no special claim to authenticity. That's the opposite of your original claim that Iran's hostility flows from Islamic doctrine.
You started by claiming Iran represents Islamic teaching. Now you're saying every Muslim community makes up their own version. Pick one: you can't have both.
And you still haven't provided a single citation of actual Islamic doctrine supporting violence against Jews, which was the original challenge.
You are engaging in an elaborate No True Scotsman fallacy.
For me, if if walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, and I will consider the Islamic Republic of Iran to be Islamic. I don't particularly care about sectarian squabbles what is geniunely Islamic or not.
You've retreated to "if it calls itself Islamic, it's Islamic," like claiming North Korea represents democracy because "Democratic" is in its name.
When you stated "There is no version of Islam that would be representative of Islam generally," you contradict Islamic tradition itself. The Prophet Muhammad, the FOUNDER of the religion said: "My community will never agree upon error" and "Allah's hand is with the congregation" (Source: Tirmidhi). This hadith establishes that consensus (ijma) of the Muslim community is authoritative in Islam.
Look, these facts remain: you admitted Iran's system is Khomeini's modern innovation. Most Muslim nations have peaceful relations with Israel. And you've cited zero Islamic doctrines supporting your claim.
This isn't about religion: it's politics in religious clothing. If Iran's position were truly Islamic, 1.8 billion Muslims would share it. They don't.
Stop conflating one country's politics with an entire faith.
I am pretty sure Iran's current regime wins the brutal dictatorship game
The Federation of American Scientists reported their torture methods included:
"electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails".
Allah or Jahwe, what's the difference. Both countries are some kind of theocracies, that see infidels as inferior. If Israel has nukes, so should Iran. At least Iran is Shia, so different from the most Muslims, which are Sunni.
...there is no difference. Islam and Judaism trace to Abrahamic monotheism. One through the son Isaac, the other through Ishmael.
100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid. The "existential threat" bs being peddled by a certain government is simply to give cover to illegal attacks on a sovereign nation. This is "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.
Believe people when they tell you what they are going to do. Even if Iran wouldn’t use it if they had it, threatening to use it shifts the probability for them using it.
Khomeini isn’t on Kim jong un’s level
I'm not sure how can you say that, now that they are dead, completely due to how they positioned themselves on the regional and global landscape.
https://www.bu.edu/history/files/2015/04/Khalaji-Apocalyptic...
Mutual destruction makes sense when you're a death cult and the enemy is evil. Iran nuking Israel knowing full well they will get nuked back IS rational if your belief is that Allah will reward you for it in the afterlife and they do sincerly believe that.
You should read books published by reformed Islamists. Radical by Maajid Nawaz is a good one.
They profess to believe (and they are sincere) that they will be rewarded for dying killing Israelis. There's a reason that if I tell you a story about a suicide bomber blowing up a public square in political protest you do not have to wonder what religion they are. It's not because all Muslims are insane, they aren't, it's because some of them have beliefs that make that action rational.
(For example, see how Hamas will not surrender even when offered free passage out of Gaza. They'd rather Israel grind their way through the Palestinian population bomb by bomb because they think every Palestinian killed goes to heaven. If they were rational as we understand the world, they'd realize their plight is hopeless and the only thing they ensure by staying is civillian deaths.)
Yup.
Hamas will fight to the last Palestinian. They could have ended the Gaza war a year ago (or more). All they have to say is: "Here are the hostages. Here are our weapons. We are now shoemakers."
Why don't they do this?
Because they would rather fight to the last Palestinian child.
Hamas has agency. They could end war any time since October 8, 2023.
From their perspective it’s all wins. Every bomb Israel drops sends their people to heaven and makes Israel look bad to the world.
The hardest part of conversing with a lot of people about this situation is getting them to understand the idea of a death cult. Once you accept that some people not only don’t fear death but actively seek it for themselves and their tribe, the Middle East makes a lot more sense. There’s so much evidence both in what they say (they do not hide it) and what they do but so much of the west refuses to accept it.
What I try to emphasize is that Hamas has agency. They make the decision to keep fighting, or stop fighting.
To deny Hamas agency is to dehumanize them. They have as much agency as Israel or any other actor.
And they are a death cult.
With two million Gazans between their tunnels and the IDF.
There is no way to make that nice or neat or pleasant.
why do they not do this? israel has had the ability to end the war since before its inception.
the answer to why is no surprise, the same as hamas' reason to not surrender. the israeli goal is the disappearance of all palestinians, and hamas so happens to be made up of palestinians.
Then Israeli forces colluded with Christian militias to massacre Palestinians in their camps.
Hamas was never going to disarm and hand back the hostages based on "Trust me, bro".
Hamas is a death cult. They will fight to the last Gazan child.
They have agency. They could end the war tomorrow, or a year ago.
In Iran's case this is further compounded by their consistent anti Israeli PR and anti-Israeli militias funding.
Who has "legal" WMDs - the P5? Israel is a non-signatory to NPT, meaning their WMDs are as legal as anyone else's.
By what means are the israeli nukes (I assume thats whats meant by WMDs?) illegal? They didn't sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and I don't think spying and stealing is illegal between countries under international law.
is it crazy, sure. is it crazy story to say,no. it seems real.
A pretty popular opinion these days
That place would be leveled and you wouldn't hear a peep of opposition.
You wouldn't hear any opposition from inside the USA.
At the same time, the USA levelling the place would create a lot of opposition basically everywhere else.
The UK government trying to toe the line with the USA about invading Iraq in the name of the GWOT was met with 10-16% of the UK population marching in protest against UK involvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...
This is something I bring up whenever anyone can't understand why Israel's response to Hamas' attack nearly two years ago now is likely even stronger than the USA's to 9/11 — even at best it would take a decade for the rage to dissipate, and the Israeli people are unlikely to care about the opinions of people like me for the same reason the Americans didn't.
I dunno about that. Iraq suffered between a quarter million and a million dead (depending on how you count). The % of those who touched a gun is low, under %10. The vast majority are civilians.
There wasn't a focused effort to bring in food, water or electricity to Iraq. A key difference is that Iraqis could leave, and hundreds of thousands did (to Syria, Jordan and other countries).
Israel's war in Gaza, messy and horrible as it is, is far (very far) more focused on Hamas than America's wars were in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I think you're incorrect about the opposition. You get the loud mouth left that for some reason have aligned themselves to a terrorist organisation. But if you go down the pub and speak to real people here in the UK, it's the complete opposite. It's reflected in the most recent polling where the vast majority of the country voted for what could be described as the most right-wing party seriously operating in the UK today.
People are really getting fed up of Islamic nonsense leaking into our completely incompatible society.
You've said that like it's of no significance.
"Anything different would face massive opposition and carry a political death sentence for whoever gave the order."
That's your personal opinion.
1) Israeli government willingly favored Hamas governing the Gaza strip and completely cut off the Palestinian authority
2) Israeli government ignored their own intelligence and even allowed money and weapons transfer from Qatar to Hamas
3) Israeli intelligence knew October 7 was gonna happen and did little to prevent it
4) While October 7 is one of the most despicable acts of crime and terror ever happened, it has not happened in a vacuum. It has happened by people who are literally living in the hell and open prison the Israelis have created for them
This is not considered valid in Israel.
In Israel October 7 is considered a massive failure of intelligence. No one in the top 30 of any Israeli intelligence agency that Oct 7 was going to happen.
hamas came to power in 2006 after usa forced election (against will of PA that was afraid that hamas will win). after this usa was horrified by outcome and trained/sponsored PA to take over gaza and depose hamas. PA failed and it forces were shot/thrown from roofs/dragged behind bikes and supporters tortured into obedience.
as outcome PA ceased paying salaries to it employees in gaza and foot the bill for infrastructure/etc.
there was massive outrage in media that "hundreds of thousands of people in gaza will starve now because they have no money to buy food" that forced Israel to allow money transfers from Qatar
some religious lunatics would deem that worthy
That would be primarily Evangelical Zionists, seeking to hasten the end of days.
Film, Til Kingdom Come -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Til_Kingdom_Come_(film)
so it even no need to be lunatic to act some nukes.
why would not iran gov sacrifice few million of its people to kill whole israel?
Hell, in the next 30 or so years oil will disappear from the middle east, and Iran is just about the only country that has a realistic shot at still having an economy after that.
Be neutral and objective, but America, Ukraine and Israel are currently the most agresively operating forces salivating over WW3. Yes, Russia is also quite brutal, but it's not going to profit from WW3 on the stock market!
Who are the PROFITEERS of this?
How can WE fight this war mongering?
Do we need to get active on the Battlefield? Do we need to sabotage Sattelite Networks, disarm financial incentives etc. etc. to combat those who want a WW3?
Only billionaires are going to become richer from a war. Everyone else will eat radioactive food and their DNA will be wiped out forever from the human gene pool. Seem like an Eugenic goal
All while Russia is threatning with nuclear destruction of Ukraine and Western countries.
So, how the hell is Ukraine salivating over WW3 and Russia isn't LMAO
Actions provoking WW3 are as I commented. You've not made a valid counter argument and have only chose PARTISANSHIP. Which I have not.
I suggest etiquette and neutral speech before spitting hate in internet forums.
I disagree, but in light of your previous comment, it doesn't shock me.
> Actions provoking WW3 are as I commented.
You're wrong, they're not. You have pretty clearly chosen PARTISANSHIP by stating a country being invaded and fighting for their lives and sovereignty as the ones salivating for WW3.
It's a remarkable backward-thinking exercise. Russia is clearly:
- violating International Law, the UN Charter, and many other agreements and memoranda;
- all while threatening nuclear annihilation of Ukraine, UK, USA and other European countries;
- Attacking and destroying third countries' civilian infrastructures;
Among other atrocities and crimes.
But somehow, through magical thinking, you deem them as the victims here who have nothing to gain from this.
You are not OK with stock market gains, but you're OK with Russia stealing Ukrainian natural resources, their population, including kidnapped children?
Let me ask you this: according to your logic, were Hitler and Stalin the victims, and was Poland salivating for starting WW2?
Iran is not tribal, it is a fairly ancient empire with strong continuity over 2500 years. Approximately as old as Rome, but with no collapse.
Iran will almost certainly hold together if the current batch of rulers disappears. It survived even the Mongols.
They took back their government and they “gave” it to the clerics back in C20
The Iranians by and large have the state they want. Strong parallel with Irish history where independence brought about a theocratic Junta. That only went away with deeper integration into the European economy.
Because what does get forgotten is that socialists worldwide strongly supported the revolution, from Moscow to Brazil, Berlin to New York, including supporting khomeini. With the UK's campaign "khomeini doesn't seek power, just wants to free Iran" message (spread by the BBC), and France's asylum and help. Protest marches in support of what turned out to be murderous islamists in every capital.
As for tactics: Khomeini (let's be honest here: it was Khomeini) organized snipers to shoot into the security services during a protest, provoking a battle where 89 people died ... at which point Khomeini declared that "4,000 innocent protesters were massacred by Zionists".
The protestors, whipped up by leftists did not take khomeini at his word, organized a general country-wide strike ... Khomeini organized further attacks on both his allies and the government, each time blaming zionists, never losing socialist support ... and 2 years later, now in power, Khomeini organized a massacre to "purify" Iranian society of his socialist allies, at least 3800 brutally executed, including high school students, one at most 7 years old. He has kept killing, and khamenei has continued the killings, some years 300, in the last decade more like 1000 every year.
Famously khamenei declared that "executing minors is illegal, if they're virgins". By which he meant that female prisoners are to be raped multiple times before execution. [1]
But I guess that's better than vague oil corruption and evil western influence, isn't it? Never mind that of course the revolution has totally failed Iran. They did not bring jobs, did not bring housing, did not ... in the 50 years they have in power.
Needless to say, more people died in Khomeini's purification than in every other part of the revolution combined. Hell, more people died in the last 5 years of "islamic" peace, than died in the 5 years of the revolution.
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/iran-security...
They're talking about the current regime, from which it isn't clear the population will ever successfully take back their country.
I think the point of this bombing is to change the calculus you just mentioned. Now there’s an actual reason to not try for nukes, you may get bombed.
NK’s conventional weapons (and SK’s pointed right back at them) saved them from conflict, that’s how they got to nukes without us doing something like this. They already had mutually assured destruction from conventional weapons and proximity to an ally.
Iran’s problem is we don’t care much about anyone around them except Israel, and they already would destroy Israel if they could, so they had nobody’s head at which to aim their bullet.
NK’s government is an evil one but the Kims really like being alive and that keeps them somewhat rational. They are quite obviously not religious since they claim to be God (and surely are aware they are not), so they don’t believe in benefits to martyrdom.
Islamism is a death cult (and I mean that literally) so their actions aren’t rational as we would define the word. We can’t rely on their self-preservation instinct the way we can with the Kims.
Germany in that case will then briefly technically have nukes, but no ability to knowledge of how to launch or control them. Had Ukraine tried to hold onto those nukes and/or figure out how to launch them they would likely have been invaded by just about every country in the world, including the US, so they gave them up for a few bucks and some kind words.
And I strongly disagree about Iran. Pakistan is also an Islamic country (with its proper name being the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) and a nuclear power, and they haven't just decided to go nuke India who they have abysmal relations with. Religion does provide a different level of comfort with death (and Iran has a longgggggg history of enduring pain to expel invaders on top), but it does not just turn people into death cult members.
There's some irony in that if Iran had nuclear weapons their relations with Israel would likely have been much better. Because Israel wouldn't have been constantly attacking, assassinating, and otherwise doing everything they could to undermine the country. It's similar to how if North Korea didn't have nukes then South Korea, largely as a proxy of the US, would likely have been actively attacking them.
South Korea was never going to attack North Korea because, as I mentioned, they had plenty of conventional weapons they could easily deliver to South Korea. They had mutually assured destruction before they even tried to get nukes, that's why they succeeded. Iran does not have that yet, and must be stopped before they do.
I do now know whether this was the right way to do it by any means, and I think it's a shame that the Obama-era deal was abandoned. I think we could possibly have gotten here through peaceful measures. But we did need to get to here.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_state-sponsored_t...
I don’t think there’s any evidence at all that fighting terrorism creates more terrorists than it kills, that’s just a thing people say and reality seems to show the opposite. We haven’t had waves of terror since gutting Al Queda, ISIS, etc. There’s neither research nor data to support it, people just like the way it sounds so they repeat it.
It's not that simple. Those countries were destined towards collapse with or without nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Syria—those are three countries that fell into catastrophic civil wars, along internal conflict lines, in power vacuums succeeding an unpopular dictator. None of those autocracies were stable in the long-term. (But a nuclear weapon is quite stable; it succeeds the falls of governments and passes on to whoever replaces them).
Deplore US' strategic stupidities all you want; but it's not the only actor with agency in the world.
Would anyone have been better off with Assad fighting a version of the 2010's civil war with nuclear weapons in his arsenal? Or Hussein, that sectarian war? Those are two men who gassed thousands of innocents with nerve agents; they wouldn't surely wouldn't hesitate long about dropping nukes.
(Can you deter a civil war with nuclear weapons?)
We could also ask who would have inherited a hypothetical Qaddafi nuke, after his fall: which Libya? There were at least three Libyas one point. ISIL governed one!
(One semantic nitpick: I don't think it's fair to say those dictators "gave up" their WMD's. With all three, their WMD programs were forcibly taken from them. In Iraq, 1981, the bombing of the Osirak reactor; and again in the 1991 Gulf War the bombing of Tuwaitha (which permanently ended Iraq's uranium enrichment). Qaddafi turned over all his nuclear materials to the USA, after being directly threatened, in the months following US' 2003 invasion of Iraq. And Assad lost his North Korean-built plutonium reactor in 2007, to an airstrike. Did anyone of these dictators have agency in those "give up WMD" choices? I think not).
For Libya and Syria, sure, but what are you talking about for Iraq? Saddam was unambiguously ousted from an internally secure position of power by a foreign invasion that followed in the wake of over a decade of heavy sanctions and no-fly zone imposure. By many accounts, Saddam had a strong base of support within his population and his rule was stable (backed by a blend of patronage and severe terror obviously) right up until the day he was ousted by vastly superior military might from outside.
While it's extremely hard to know what would have happened to his regime had he still been in power by the time of the Arab Spring and the events that caused the ouster of Gaddafi and eventually Assad, Saddam would surely have been able to stay in power at least up to then. I certainly don't imagine him having more difficulty handling an internal strife of the kind that ruined Assad's dictatorship. Except for his catastrophic miscalculation of making a long-term enemy of the US during the first, utterly pointless Gulf War, he at least showed himself to be the far more experienced and careful dictator during his rule.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/north-koreas-artill...
Iran’s deterrent was/is through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis) along with its sizable missile inventory, anti-air capabilities and strategic threats to oil and gas exports.
Israel’s investment in missile defense and the outcome of the Oct 7th attacks severely weakened Iran’s deterrence to a conventional attack.
I think the lesson should be that any nation that has enough conventional leverage to deter an attack could choose to build nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons may complement, but can’t displace other capabilities.
The US has nuclear weapons but that didn’t deter Iran from launching direct attacks on US troops in the Middle East or sponsoring insurgents in Iraq. Nuclear weapons are also essential worthless against non nation-state actors such as Al-Qaeda.
If South Korea’s coalition could establish air superiority over the DMZ and artillery range in the first moves, I think it takes you from “Seoul destroyed” to a “pretty average modern conflict.”
Hot take for sure, but war has changed.
Once you've obtained some nukes, complete with decent rockets to liv them, nobody is going to mess with you too badly, or try to take the nukes back; you're now a member if the club.
Japan or South Korea would likely be able to produce nuclear weapons in a few months if they needed to. I bet even Ukraine could, with its remaining nuclear plants and relatively advanced industry, and are on friendly terms with the US.
But if you made enemies with the big members of the nuclear club, and with the US in particular, they will do everything to stop you, and your situation would become much harder; that's the case with Iran.
1) They could not operate them. It isn't just about authorization sequence, it's about having all of the required electronics. You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs. All of those were in Moscow hands. Even if Ukraine could ignite them, it could not launch them or set their paths, etc.
2) They did not have the budget to guard them, let alone maintain them, even less reverse engineer. The biggest risk was that rough states with deep pockets would buy those rockets on the black market (and Ukraine notably sold out most of their soviet arsenal).
3) Thus, the only real asset was the nuclear material itself. An asset that was more likely going to end up on the black market than do anything useful for Ukraine's defense.
The value of nuclear weapons is in the warheads not delivery vehicles. Even then Ukraine absolutely could maintain a trimmed down nuclear arsenal with the missiles/engines serviced by Yuzhmash. After all bare ass Russia did it in the 1990s somehow. All the American financing of nuclear security to Russia would have been proportionally redirected to Ukraine.
Then, Ukraine possessed a stockpile of highly enriched uranium all way until 2011. It was indeed sold off under Yanukovich to a rogue state though: Russia.
There is one huge drawback to not signing the memorandum: Lukashenka's Belarus (another signatory) would have also kept the nukes. This is however never brought up by the memorandum fans and non-proliferation enjoyers on the Internet precisely because it's not something they would have minded.
There's nothing wrong, what I wrote literally comes from official declassified documents and reports, you can read what insiders had to say.
Ukrainians didn't want them, feared their meltdown and their inability to even just maintain them. The rest of the world knew they were bound to end up in a rogue's actor hands very soon.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/slate....
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/ukraine-illuminated...
Either way you seem to contradict yourself. On one hand Ukraine, then a major owner of former Soviet military industrial complex could not maintain or use the weapons. On the other you insist unspecified rogue actors would be skilled enough to maintain and use them. Make up your mind.
So the rest of the world did not know anything, as the perfect safety record of enriched nuclear fuel in Ukraine illustrates. They did want for the nukes to end up in Russia for the proliferation fears and convenience of negotiating with one power. The decision turned out ultimately misguided, contributing to the unraveling of the postwar world order we see today (ironically including the proliferation of nuclear technology to the rogue states). Bill Clinton, about as insider as it gets have expressed his regrets about it last year.
No you don't. Cold war ICBMs all used intertial guidance. The most advanced in the form of the MX had a max CEP of 90 m.
1) Nukes were built mostly by Ukrainian engineers. They would do just fine. They could also build and launch satellites if needed.
2) So Ukraine couldn't launch them because they needed electronics and satellites, but some rogue state with deep pocket could? Okay.
3) Of course!
Comrade, that is Russian propaganda you are disseminating here.
This sounds ridiculous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project#Log...
You can see the link in GP comment by yourself.
Even basic logic - Ukraine had the technical know-how to do whatever they wanted with the nukes. Moscow didn't have control, at best on paper - if they had control, there was no need for the Budapest Memorandum.
I keep debunking this propaganda point over and over again lol
Please, take a 15 minutes to educate yourself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Armed_Forces#Structure_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Rocket_Forces
You have to process massive piles of mass into a very small fraction. And you have to collect all those rocks. And that’s just for fission.
As long as any country with preemptive strike capability exists, and satellites exist… I just don’t see how anyone could do it.
If that was viable, why would Biden not have done so during the years he had?
And you know this how? Accordingly to all those initial predictions Russia should be already disintegrated and fallen under heavy sanctions, Putin's regime replaced etc. etc. I suspect all these analytics and think tanks should be cleaning toilets instead.
Also there is a line in that backing crossing which may lead to an all out nuclear war. Rational countries that matter understandably do not want to test it unless their existence is really threatened.
That's ahistorical in the case of Syria and Iraq. Israel destroyed the nascent nuclear weapons programmes of Syria and Iraq, just as it has done to Iran's. Syria and Iraq did not give up those programmes willingly.
Or had them, and then gave them up because they were under the impression that they would be protected if they did so; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de...
So, I have an honest (non rhetorical) question: Was NK saved more by having their own nukes, or by sharing a land border with China who has nukes and doesn't want the US getting involved in the area?
Nuclear weapons can target, the US based on the region, sure. But NK does not need nukes to reduce the south Korean capital to rubble.
By your logic, I am a little surprised Iran is still even a state then.
How has the situation been better in the twenty years NK has had nuclear weapons than the fifty years after the Korean war and before NK got nukes?
I never understood the logic.. (or maybe it's the theatric element?) There are other WMD that seem much simpler. If they hypothetically release some horrible biological agent in Israel - it could incapacitate the country overnight
Or set off a dirty bomb to make huge regions unlivable (just the perception of radiation risk would preclude many from living there.. see Fukushima)
No you don't, unless you're a dictatorship (including all the examples you gave).
That sounds insane. I don't think world would be more peaceful if every country under every government had WMDs. We'd be in the middle of nuclear winter now if that was the case. You could draw analogies to everyone owning a gun. We know it just ends up with many more dead and nothing being more peaceful.
> Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
He's wrong. What protects North Korea is that it's poor, has no natural resources and devastated human capital and neither attacks anyone with terrorist attacks nor credibly prophesies their intent to kill any nation or ethnicity.
If they did that, they'd be steamrolled already. WMDs or not.
Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice.
Why not? Smart people can make decisions that look weird from the outside.
The foreign policy of the US been looking weird for decades to most outside parties, yet I'm sure there are smart people involved in it on a daily basis. But even with smart people involved, the US been invading countries based on false premises more than once, not sure why it would need to be different for Iran or any other country.
And yet Iranian proxies have repeatedly challenged these powers across the Middle East, in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Sinai, etc. And a lot of Iran's actions have broad support in many other Middle Eastern countries, including strong US allies, those where there are no natural ethnic, religious or linguistic ties to Iran, and where there is prosperity based on peace and the American world order.
Whatever else the Iranian govt are, they are not foreign policy under-hitters or flawed tacticians blinded by dogmatism.
Imagine if they'd spent the money on education, or developing their economy. They could easily have reconciled with the U.S. if they stopped chanting "Death to America" and done something productive with their time and money. This was the inevitable result of their plans, and easily predictable.
They did spend a lot of the oil revenue on both education and developing their economy.
Compare them perhaps to Saudi Arabia, a similar sized country with much more oil and much fewer people. Saudi does not have any industry, does not export anything except hydrocarbons. All the extraction is done by foreign engineers.
Iran educates engineers, including many foreign students, has industry outside of oil, and largely works its own drilling and refinery. The Iranian economy is not dependent on migrant labor.
Saudi pays billions to Europe and America for high tech weaponry, yet can't defeat the Houthis. A considerable proportion of the money goes to baksheesh both for the Saudis themselves and their western suppliers. If Saudi decided tomorrow to challenge its Western backers in any real way, the umbrella would be withdrawn and the guys in the solid gold cars would last about a week.
Iran has wreaked havoc throughout the region for 40 years by putting $30 rifles, $200 RPGs, $100 IEDs and now, $2000 drones in the right (wrong) hands at the right time. They haven't lost a regular soldier in battle since the 1980s.
Even if you're calling the end of Iranian influence in the region right now, it's still an incredible run of hitting above one's weight. The only country in the Middle East this can be compared with is Israel, who are themselves legendary for hyper-insightful tactical leverage.
You can try a lot of mental contortions to justify it, but I think the simplest explanation is the cleanest: this forever war against Israel and America — the "little Satan" and the "great Satan" as they referred to them — was a catastrophic miscalculation. They should have spent the time and money elsewhere, and reconciled with America at least, and life would be better for Iranians if they had.
1: https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-and-national-se...
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
2. There are plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are religious fanatics or just power hungry or want to advance in the IRGC ranks/carrier ladder. Khamene.ai is a Living God and there are many engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who worship this deity
3. There are also lots of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are threatened and forced to work for the IRGC. Just like it was in the Soviet Union under the Communism
We will just forget that von Neumann advocated for nuclear first strike based on game theory.
America also has lots of brilliant people. Then we have Hegseth, Noem and the other fuck.
Was enriched uranium destroyed? I doubt it.
Have they even "obliterated" Fordow site buried 90 m deep inside the mountain? I have serious doubts.
Iran's nuclear program was set back some months if anything.
Iran is a huge country and USA and Israel has been pointing their finger on this exakt spot for weeks.
Either they dug further down or they just transported things away.
Leaving it all there just seems like a really weird thing to do.
This implies a tunnel system, or was this transport done in plain sight?
https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-has-attacked-irans-nuc...
> "Prior to tonight’s airstrikes on the three Iranian nuclear-associated facilities, Maxar collected high-resolution satellite imagery on June 19th and June 20th of the Fordow fuel enrichment facility that revealed unusual truck and vehicular activity near the entrance to the underground military complex. On June 19th, a group of 16 cargo trucks were positioned along the access road that leads to the tunnel entrance of the facility. Subsequent imagery on June 20th revealed that most of the trucks had repositioned approximately one kilometer northwest along the access road; however, additional trucks and several bulldozers were seen near the entrance to the main facility and one truck was positioned immediately next to the main tunnel entrance."
hopefully I am wrong
I don't know if you noticed, but what you are arguing for is in fact for mindlessly accepting unverified claims and extrapolate them to an optimal outcome. This is the opposite of critical thinking, and goes well beyond wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, if you pay attention to OP's point, you'll understand that Iran's nuclear sites have been continuously designed and developed for decades, while subjected to an almost evolutionary pressure, to continue operations even after withstanding direct attacks in scenarios matching exactly Trump's attacks.
In the very least, you must assess the effect of those strikes before making any sort of claim.
Another factor which it seems you somehow missed was the fact that Russia, another nuclear-capable totalitarian regime, is nowadays heavily dependent on Iran to conduct it's imperialist agenda. If Russia was negotiating handing over nuclear capabilities to North Korea in exchange for supporting it's war effort, do you believe Russia now has no interest to speed up Iran's nuclear weapons programmes?
This isn't really relevant but I'm only making one comment in this post so I'll say it here: young folks don't remember decades of Iranian state sponsored terrorism and do not understand the context of conflict in the middle east.
Conflict in the Middle East is entirely rooted in Israeli ethnic cleansing campaigns and western adventurism and protections of Israeli interests. If Iran went away tomorrow, the region would still have massive support for violent movements targeting Israel.
This would also be a very convenient way to break the current impasse: Trump can claim victory and brag about US weapons, Iranians can continue their program virtually unscathed, perhaps after bombing some minor evacuated US base for show.
After the dust settles, Iran can withdraw fron NNPT and the next day have Pakistan ship them a bomb. Peace (via MAD) achieved! Maybe we should even give Donald his Nobel prize for that.
I guess means no. However I have no idea what they would say if they did. "Yes we poisoned the whole area for generations to come, success!"
Keep in mind, Israel has full aerial control over Iran and has taken out hundreds of their missile launchers.
We can keep pounding the various nuclear facilities and hinder ant chances of rebuilding, making any effort futile.
Arguably the same could happen given widespread use of non petroleum sources of energy. Prices will go up to reflect the marginal cost of hydrocarbon based energy, even if that use is minimal, until the point where the energy network is completely decoupled from those markets.
This happened in the United Kingdom after the invasion of Ukraine. More wind was used as gas became more expensive. But the price of electricity from wind also went up.
Such advanced people, the Chinese are.
CEP with GPS for our most accurate glide bombs is 5 meters. But GPS jamming is cheap and easy and the best precision we get in that case is 30 meters CEP.
GPU-57 gets its power from gravity. Reaching that 60 meter maximum penetration requires dropping the bomb from maximum elevation, but without GPS, that further increases the CEP.
With just 6 bombs, it seems unlikely that they could reliably penetrate. Actual penetration would likely require nuclear penetrators, but those also break the nuclear prohibition and open Pandora's box in places like Ukraine.
A great example of the problem is Yemen. We tried to get the Houthi to stop by dropping bunker busters on their tunnel systems and completely failed. We were forced to reach a ceasefire agreement (one that likely went up in smoke last night).
The distance between Israel and Iran is huge - it must be extremely expensive to operate the air bridge allowing their air force to operate as it did last week.
But I would be really surprised if they can go on like that for a month.
> This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent
Well now we should all be terrified.
> Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first
You should reflect on the religious elements prominently at play within these belligerent states.
I deplore kakistocracy of any stripe, but it is obvious that dictatorships and dictatorship-curious regimes of any sort are an existential threat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_m...
also you say nk uses nukes as deterrent, deterrent from whom? if they deterred any, they were fine deterring it for 40+ years without.
In what sense Israel is not a theocracy.
Theocracy is a form of government in which religious leaders rule in the name of a deity, and religious law is the basis for all legal and political decisions.
However, Israel does have highly theocratic tendencies. Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute. They have even more religious influence on public life than the USA does (which is already somewhat high by European standards), with businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays (not selling risen bread during Passover, making elevators stop automatically on every floor during days of rest, observing kosher restrictions on food etc). Many of their foreign policy decisions are explicitly influenced by religious tenets, such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god (which includes modern day Israel, the Occupied Territories, and several parts of modern day Syria, Lebanon, and others).
They're nowhere near the level of religous rule and/or fanaticism as Saudi Arabia, but they have much more religious influence and control of public life then a modern European/US-style democracy.
Hence I brought it up, yes.
> Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute.
Many reputable democracies[1], including Germany, Australia, Norway or Switzerland, have a reference to god in their constitution; that doesn't make them theocracies. Even in the USA, presidents swear their oath on the bible!
> businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays
Try purchasing something on a Christian holiday in Germany. Did you know it's prohibited by law to play Life of Brian in public on Easter Sunday there?
> such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god
That in turn isn't government directive, but a political opinion amongst several. Now I'm very much in opposition to a lot of what the Israeli government does, but they're really not what the term Theocracy means. That claim is just ridiculous.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_references_to_G...
None of these say that their states are Christian and Democratic, nor do they have government decisions finding that this means anything at all. In Israel, by contrast, their highest court has found that, for example, a right to return for Palestinians would be unconstitutional - as it would undermine the Jewish character of the state of Israel. A reference to some god in their constitution would be a completely different thing.
> That in turn isn't government directive, but a political opinion amongst several.
This is an extreme downplaying of what I said. Several of the people in charge of the Israeli government have explicitly and exclusively, religious motivations in their decision making - that is a very clear sign of a form of theocracy.
/s
They will tell you that the theocracy folks were a small minority of the entire resistance and first built a government of unity.
Once in charge they started annihilating all other opposition factions one by one.
OP referred to democratic votes, whereas you talk about "popular uprising". Can you explain in your own words why you believe these are even comparable?
You should seriously learn about Yanukovych before making any sort of claim regarding him. He was elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU and pro-western programme, only to turn out to be a Russian puppet that not only enforced policies completely contrary to his programme but also pushed Ukraine into a dictatorship.
The "popular uprising" you glance over was actually months of demonstrations protesting Yanukovych unilateral rejection of the EU–Ukraine association agreement as ordered by Russia, which he campaigned and was elected for and contrary to Ukraine's parliament overwhelming approval.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
You're talking about the same Yanukovych who felt compelled to exile in Russia.
> That should show that depending on who is being ousted (...)
Those who favour freedom under democracies are indeed partial against dictators who try to destroy democratic states and deny people's rights, specially if it to serve the interests of other totalitarian regimes.
But the US was far too eager to carry out regime change and so we have the dreadful situation today.
Only if one is utterly blind and put fingers in their ears, can one truly believe that. Nuland's call was leaked where she was proudly deciding who would form the next government in Ukraine and who should be kept on the outside. And her personal choice of puppet: "Yats" did in-fact become the prime minister. Nuland was even handing out cookies to anti-Yanukovych protests for Christ's sake. Mc Cain actually flew in and congratulated the protesters.
Imagine if that was happening in the US against a US President - members of foreign nation's government cheering on a coup and deciding who would be the next President. There would be Absolute War.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
Yes, the USA is attempting to facilitate talks here. No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda.
Listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUCCR4jAS3Y
> No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda
Anyone with a rational brain who separates themselves from biases and emotions and carefully listens to the call would realize there is no propaganda involved here. Also, for better clarity of judgement, please perform a thought exercise and consider what would happen if a foreign government's members were discussing the personal choices , makeup and "talks" for members of the next American government.
We can discuss potential successors to Xi right here on HN, and an outsider might say that "a forum frequented by Silicon Valley billionaires is picking the next leader of China". But that would be a huge misrepresentation of us and our influence.
The fixation of Russian trolls on that single phone call reeks of desperation. During election season, I'd expect hundreds of such calls to be happening at any given moment between various officials, strategists, financiers, candidates, analysts, and many other people.
No. The ones that try to push agendas that go against their programme and are deeply unpopular will often see public protests and even general strikes demanding policy reversals or governments stepping down. Do you call those regime changes as well?
Who's going to impeach them?
You mean like "peacemaker"/"America First" Donald Trump?
> why is the solution to that problem "just endure four years of destruction until he leaves"?
If Americans can wait out for the second Trump term to be over, Ukrainians could do it too for Yanukovych.
Yes, he was. What you are leaving out is the fact that in spite of being elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU platform, it turned out he was a Russian agent and betrayed his mandate to enforce Kremlin's anti-west agenda and force himself upon Ukraine as another kremlin-controlled dictatorship.
Except the people of Ukraine wanted none of that and protested against this betrayal, which culminated in the wannabe dictator seeking exile in Russia.
Somehow you leave this out when you talk about basic democratic principles. Why is that? Is it out of sheer ignorance?
What's also very odd is the way that you somehow try to portray anti-government protests as revolutions and regime changes, when this is a Hallmark of any democratic system: when a government doesn't follow through with their compromise and go directly against their mandate and people's will, they express their discontent and demand elections. How odd that when democracies reject Russia's interference, this is deemed as an anti-democratic coup.
Let me see if Erdogan can be overthrown in the next elections in Turkey. No US involvement either.
If you live in a stable Western country, your trust in the next elections being fair and free is understandable, but in that case, refrain from any authoritative talk ("your arguments don't matter") about other places. In recent democracies that transitioned from totalitarian rule just a decade or two ago, elections are far easier to hijack than in the UK or Denmark.
"no-one would have batted an eye"
You cannot really make such a strong prediction about places like Ukraine, the Balkans, the Middle East etc. These are places where empires collide, and several crises in a century are almost a given.
Anyway I am fairly glad that Ukraine didn't end up like Belarus did, a satellite state of Moscow. Anything is better than becoming a satellite state of Moscow. Most of us from behind the Iron Curtain would rather fight a war than submit to Moscow again.
Interestingly, the Western leftists, who otherwise preach anti-colonialism from breakfast to sunset and then some, don't understand the same dynamic among white-majority nations. But it is still there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ukrainian_presidential_el...
"Over 700 observers from EU member states participated, in addition to OSCE/ODIHR, the EU Parliament, PACE, and other international delegations"
The Guardian reported EU-led observers praised the vote as "fair and truly competitive" noting only "minor irregularities” that did not affect overall results".
"After the second round of the election international observers and the OSCE called the election transparent and honest."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/08/viktor-yanukov...
Could you tone down your arrogance, please?
I was talking about the next election. You expressed your conviction that Yanukovich could be removed in the next election, remember?
I expressed my doubt about iron-cladness of such future election. Strongmen-like leaders in fresh democracies have a lot of methods how to win next elections without actually winning them.
Yanukovych had over 100 people killed in a violent crackdown on protests, then fled to Russia as he was about to be imprisoned. On 21 February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted 328-0 to hold snap elections to replace Yanukovych before the end of his term. Not a single member of his own party supported him or voted against the decision. He was replaced through general elections held a few months later. This is exactly how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_election
The vote did not follow formal impeachment procedure under Article 111 of the Ukrainian Constitution (which requires a Constitutional Court review and more formal steps).
I am sure you then have no objections to the 53–0 vote in Crimea to remove the then-Ukrainian-appointed prime minister Anatoly Mogilev and install Sergei Aksyonov and the subsequent referendum on autonomy. After all, this is "exactly how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work".
Regarding the Crimean referendum, I do have objections: international law considers referendums held under foreign military occupation illegitimate, and rightfully so. Had Hitler staged a referendum in occupied Paris after the invasion, would that have meant that the French willingly joined the Third Reich?
The Crimean referendum is nothing new. In the 1940s, the USSR also staged a series of votes to legitimize their invasions of European nations. At this point, I would consider anyone expecting me to take these referendums seriously as either severely underinformed or simply maliciously trolling.
No, not really. Having a radical group remove another totalitarian ruler doesn't automatically grant them legitimacy or any arguments involving "self determination of people".
- whose Basic Law 2018 declared it a Jewish supremacist state
- where 50% of the population doesn't have the right to vote, land ownership, or travel on the same roads
- and faces 99% conviction rates in military, not civil, courts
- where parties can be banned directly by government decision if it arbitrarily deems them to be anti-Jewish
The fundamental issue is the population of the West Bank, who, outside of Palestinian Authority areas (aka "Area A"), are largely controlled by Israel but cannot vote. Note that 1-2 million West Bank Palestinians live in Area A under the Palestinian Authority.
- Within Israel, there is a Communist Party (which rejects religion and ethnicity) and other parties (including two Arab parties).
- A key problem in Israeli democracy, which it would be helpful if you noted, is that although there are two Arab parties (and majority Jewish parties who welcome Arabs), the Arab population of Israel votes at a low rate. This results in their being under-represented in the Knesset.
- The Basic Law you refer to made zero change to who can have political power.
- The 50% you refer to is neither the right percentage, nor does it take into account areas of great Palestinian autonomy.
- Function of the legal system has never been relevant to who can vote or hold office.
If you want to reflect what is on the ground, I suggest you take in the whole picture.
Interesting that 20% of Israelis do not believe in a deity. 18% are Muslim. In Iran, Jews are 0.03% of the population.
I find this very disingenuous because the person you replied to was talking only about Iran, and stating that Iran is a theocracy in their opinion. They never mentioned anything about Iran, let alone stating that Israel isn't a theocracy.
So asking this question, this way, is quite strange in my opinion.
I think the "Jewish state" refers to how the country serves as the homeland for the jewish people, not how they force a religion upon others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state
Israel's legal definition is "Jewish and Democratic state", which explicitly ensures "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_and_democratic_state
Hamas/Gaza:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O’ Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him,”
And the west bank's government pays pensions according to how many Jews you hurt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_...
(No worries the "parliamentary democracy" that the WB is - hah! - promises to stop that now. Well, except for the payments)
But this is a general problem with all muslim-majority nations. Take an extremely moderate one - Morocco - defines itself as:
"A sovereign Muslim State, attached to its national unity and to its territorial integrity, the Kingdom of Morocco intends to preserve,"
Israel isn't any more apartheid than any of those places. Given that Israeli Arabs can and do vote (and become Medical Doctors), Israel is a heck of a lot _less_ apartheid than those places.
Consider travel... it can help you get outside the "american" box.
Of course this government is FAR worse, including on racism, than the worst Israel has ever been accused of. It's not going to change their minds ...
The current Iranian government started blaming Israel for everything long before they were even in power. Socialists supported them back then ... and largely now.
Clearly, one is forced to conclude, they see no problem with such actions.
They are all ethno states.
The very concept "nation-state" is an alignment of "ethnic tribe" with "political borders"
You might want to hit a history book or two.
In this regard, Israel is more normal and places like the U.S. are abnormal. (Once you get outside the U.S....)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_the_Galilee
Israel started bombing Iran and they returned fire. Is trump asking the largest economic and military power in the region to sit by idle as Israel sends missiles and bombs daily? He won't clarify even when asked directly. I don't think we have any reason to believe his narrative if he can't even explain it himself.
I would also like to add that Trump himself is the one who removed IAEA inspectors from routine inspections of Iran, so occams razor would suggest this ambiguity is by design.
> IAEA inspectors
What are some good reasons for producing >60% HEU?
Why are you swallowing the propaganda you've been spoon-fed?
"Gabbard: Iran is not currently developing nuclear weapons"
https://jewishinsider.com/2025/03/gabbard-iran-is-not-curren...
So you're saying we're here because America has mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations and this is the best move?
Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you.
How well would you sleep at night?
And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people are taking sides on a religious war. Stay out. Stay far out. There is no winning. There is no stopping the conflict. Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. The only thing to see is human atrocities as far as the eye in the name of <your god of choice>.
> There's a state ... [that has] ... the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium
Do they? It's oft repeated. But I vaguely remember this country being sold on an Iraq invasion due to nukes. Nukes that never existed and never were close to existing. This wasn't a simple miscalculation. The nukes were entirely and knowingly fictional. And that's just one example of a bullshit made-up reason this nation has started a war to waste lives.
How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Why should I believe my country today? Why is today the day of all days that the truth is finally being told? Why is today the day that god is real and I should jump in on the bloodshed?
Your masters are lying to you, to their benefit. They didn't wake up today and decide to be honest.
> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.
> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?
They clearly and openly state that they want to force Palestinians off of their land and are using violence towards that end.
If there were a button to get rid of Palestinians, Israelis would “hit it twice”.
https://youtu.be/BkP78hyLl4w
You know better than to listen to rants on line... I hope!
Here’s a survey conducted by Israeli researchers showing that vast majority (82%) of Israelis surveyed support forcibly expelling Palestinians.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article/.p...
Hamas could have ended the war in Gaza a year ago. Or on October 8 2023.
Do they? No. They will fight to the last Gazan child.
Is it nice that Israelis see no alternative to Gazans being resettled elsewhere? No.
Do you have a path for Gazans to go back to the mid 1990's when 100+ Gazans came to Kibbutz Nir Oz for a peace festival?
No matter how many times I see it, the constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me.
Uh? So can you explain the genocide?
(If you correct for the 100K+ who left Gaza before Egypt closed its border in 2024)
The population growth rate in the West Bank and Gaza is higher than that of Europe.
I ain't the one having the babies... The residents of those places are.
Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up.
Our elected leaders constantly attempt to expand their own power. To maximally punish whistleblowers. Our election system is ran by a duopoly who exerts extreme power over those voicing alternative views and opinions.
About democracy, it is not.
Let's say it was though. What gives us the right to blow other countries off the face of the planet? Are we somehow so much better than everyone else because we believe we're democratic? We don't even rank in the top 10 most democratic countries. We throw more people in jail than China. Per capita AND total overall. We throw more kids in jail than any other first world country [0].
Surely, democracy does not automagically lend to treating people fairly. We have enough problems in our own damn democracy to worry about. Crazy to be starting wars to "help" someone who never asked for it. Forcing violence upon those who never consented is absolutely abhorrent.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/afric...
The sudden switch yesterday from "they can't make nukes" to "they're a fortnight away from ICBMs" felt a little too reminiscent of Iraq twenty years ago.
If we want a stable Middle East, we have to stop bombing the shit out of it, and invest. Negotiate fairly for resources. Offer them a future. And demand Israel stop committing war crimes.
Forced separation only deepens the hatred.
Trump and his people are children in the back of a car that found mummy’s gun in her purse. They have no idea what they are doing. I understand what Israel is doing but the US administration are clueless and rudderless.
It is the only country that has constitutional preference for an ethnic group instead of equality of all subjects/citizens.
It is also the only country with automatic citizenship based on religion.
It is also the only country with nuclear weapons but not part of NPT. Even North Korea is a member of NPT.
The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore.
Is there discrimination, in all directions? Yup. The world is a tribal place.
But you should move on from that "tiered" thing. I live here. I have been doing a project with Arabs for the last two weeks. We have lunch together most days. Move on.
- Constitution -- You clearly have not read the constitutions of Syria, Saudi Arabia, or many other countries. Ethnic groups are all over the identities of most of the world's countries.
- Automatic citizenship - How narrow do you define this? African Americans can go to Liberia and other countries of Africa. Until just twenty years ago or so anyone with a German grandparent could automatically get German citizenship. If you are Cuban you can get American citizenship. Are you thinking this through?
- NPT, I am not sure anyone cares, but this is very different than your other topics.
Looks theocratic to me
Some well meaning citizens said “I want to check Israeli rather than Jew, Druze, Arab, etc.” Except Israeli is not a nationality in this sense. Nor is Jewish, on this form, a religious identification. It is a way of tracking, for census reasons, something closer to ethnicity. Not for nefarious purposes, but just to track demographics.
from the article:
> the court explained that doing so would have “weighty implications” on the State of Israel and could pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people.
That is a very strong claim that needs very strong evidence.
1. You have to define 'Israel' quite carefully to make it work. Palestinians in East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. Is East Jerusalem part of Israel or not?
2. There are several other democracies in the Middle East, for example Iraq and Lebanon.
3. Some of the countries which aren't democratic, would be democratic, except that representative governments were overthrown by the United States, in part to enforce cooperation with Israel, against the wishes of most of the people in the country. For example, Egypt.
What do those folks want for themselves? Be part of the Palestinian Authority? (Not the ones I have been doing a remodel with.) Make them part of Jordan?
Jerusalem is disputed territory. That makes it an uncomfortable mess, for more or less everyone.
The region needs more efforts toward peace, and less black and white, good/bad labeling.
East Jerusalemites are in limbo waiting for peace.
It's Jerusalem. It's a strange place.
Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things
Yes, it extends that support to cover apartheid colonial occupation, more-than-likely genocide by all the accepted definitions, and the usual smattering of targeting civilians, executing paramedics in marked ambulances and ethic cleansing.
Hamas has started in on the 7th of october 2023, effectively rolling back years of negotiations done by Yasser Arafat. Where do you think they've got the weapons from? Netanyahu is no better, but they offered him the perfect motive for a response.
Ultimately, from the United States taxpayer. Who supply the Egyptian military government, who turn a small proportion over to the Islamists to keep them from too much rabble-rousing. Who smuggle them to Hamas.
Both Qatar and Iran supply money and other forms of support to Hamas. But no RPG makes it into Gaza (across a shorter than 10 mile border) without the Egyptian military sort of knowing about it.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/10/19/hamas-used-iranian-p...
What? Israel is 2000 Kms away from Iran, and would want nothing do to with them if not for Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan and policy...
> Do they?
The IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, hardly a "bullshit made-up excuse"
Israel doesn't fear Iran's nukes. Israel fears an economically functional Iran and uses the wmd excuse to sabotage it as much as possible. The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.
Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now.
(Edit: typo)
Why do you think there was a revolution?
Iranians keep protesting; last few years have seen several large protests, involving hundreds of thousands, and continuing for months. The popularity just isn't there.
Regarding revolutions, it's quite often that a relatively small group of like-minded people capture the control, and the majority is weakly supporting them, or is even weakly opposed but complies. The French revolution was mostly about some nobility wanting to remove the monarchy that oppressed them, along with the rest; most of the population wasn't overtly anti-monarchy, and not even covertly so, but it did not like the monarchy's pressure either. The Russian revolution was "communist" and "proletarian", but even by their own Marxist accounting, proletarians were less than 10% of Russian population, and communists, much fewer still. Nevertheless, they subdued most of the Russian empire.
The Iranian revolution was also done by a group of highly religious people who were fed up with the shah's secularization reforms. The shah, AFAICT, was a guy a bit like Putin, or Saudi kings: efficient and geared towards prosperity of the country, but quite authoritarian. The fact that e.g. the educated urban population in Iran wasn't happy about authoritarianism does not imply that the same people were (or are) huge fans of theocracy. Actually, the theocracy ended up even more oppressive.
It was a blind alley anyway. Zero countries that embraced Marxism-Leninism were able to reach prosperity on that ideology. Meanwhile, a lot of desperately poor countries of the 1950s are nowadays reasonably well of, on the basis of a normal, regulated market economy.
A revolution is something in which a significant part of a nation actively participates, not something that almost the entire population sits out passively.
Of course we can debate what is the necessary fraction, but 3000 militants isn't a big deal in a country of several million. Every Iraqi cleric in 2010 was able to put together a bigger militia than that.
Sort of? The US played a role in that shit show and it wasn’t all happy days under the Shah.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
(Similarly, China under Deng Xiaoping was not a paragon of political freedom at all, but it was quite a bit more sober than under Mao Zedong. The US administration had tons of shortcomings under president Biden, but it was in quite a bit less of disarray than under president Trump.)
Israel is currently engaged in genocide, how would it be good for it to benefit enormously?
Is this some reality distortion field? This never happened. Instead the ICJ issued multiple explicit orders to Israel that Israel has violated and the genocide case is still ongoing.
If you actually care about international law, you might be interested to know that the ICC has issued (standing) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Israeli Minister for Defense for various crimes against humanity and the use of starvation in warfare.
Yeah, I mean we can still use it (or it's slowness and uselessness) to hide behind it but the facts are on the table. Gaza looks like post-war Germany at this point. People ARE starving. Meanwhile Israel expands to the east. Also illegally.
www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/un-nuclear-watchdog-censures-iran-a-move-that-could-lead-to-restore-sanctions
Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak.
Even Iran has publicly said that they have enriched to 60%. 60% is not needed for civilian uses and only useful for research in how to make it go boom.
they could show research that theyre doing for how to make nuclear power using 60% enriched uranium. nothing says they have to use an existing design
I can oppose IRA violence and British imperialism at the same time but if we're having a reasonable conversation we have to recognise that British colonial force in Ireland is what drove people to form the IRA.
Even Iran’s leaders would laugh in your face at such a naive statement, you should reconsider your media diet
To continue the analogy that's like going back to 1900 and saying Britain could pull out of Ireland except for Ulster and there'd still be people calling for further decolonisation.
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496386/Pahlavi-and-Israel-t...
so what exact goverment your arr referring?
Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities.
Before the Ottomans and various Islamic conquests it was almost entirely Christian/Roman (as was the whole Middle East). Before that Jewish.
And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there.
Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN which you reference.
False. The population in 1800 was ~90% Muslim, ~8% Christian.
> let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN
The UN had no authority to partition other people's land.
Land belongs to whoever controls it. That's it. That is all it will ever be.
If there is not some higher power (e.g. the UN, who you say does not have authority), you have no recourse.
No matter what land it is or who they are: nobody currently living was there first. The only claim is always "I was the last to control it". But none of us are the first.
> "Most of Palestine's population, estimated to be around 200,000 in the early years of Ottoman rule, lived in villages. The largest cities were Gaza, Safad and Jerusalem, each with a population of around 5,000–6,000."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine
OP's point was "Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities."
What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then?
> Almost no Jews at that time either.
What a wild claim: almost no Jews in places like Jerusalem? Please cite whatever source you have to make such an extraordinary claim.
Exactly the part that you left out: that the Jewish presence (before zionist immigration began) was of any relevance in the demography of the region.
Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...
(Links a page that shows the exact opposite)
> If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that?
Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleanse 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
Exactly. The Ottoman rule of Palestine spans 400 years, and the graph at the top of the page you linked shows that Jews became a majority in Jerusalem only at the very end of it, following zionist immigration at the end of the 19th century.
> The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish)
The problem is that this isn't reddit and people actually read the sources. This is the text of the Partition Plan:
"Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence..."
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/res181.asp
Of course if the UN were suddenly to declare that half of my country is now assigned to them only to build their, say, Arab state- then I would be quite pissed. Wouldn't you?
It wasn't "their" land, it was Ottoman land and they let Jews migrate there because Jews paid for the land.
The jews of Ottoman era were Sephardic and Mizrahi jews of N. Africa, not the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis of Germany, France and Russia.
After the UN divided the holy land into an Israeli and an Arab state, the Arabs began their ethnic cleaning campaign. That is why there were zero Jews left in Gaza or the West Bank after the war. The war that was started with the stated goal of eliminating the Jews.
And note that despite Arab calls for the Arabs to evacuate the holy land, it remained 20% Arab. And let's not get started on the Jews in the other 20 plus Arab states. What at happened to them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_...
https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/8/12/israel-sau...
So what area are arabs from? You know there are arab jews and christians right?
This is all well documented in Arab sources, they are very proud of this.
Oh i didn't realize we're going back more than a millennia. Well, in that case every modern nation state is the product of one form of genocide or another - the USA being the worst genocidal state, going back just 500 years.
>The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula
Seems silly to me to claim a land that "your people" inhabited centuries and millennia ago, as it honestly seems silly to me talk about "racial features" when talking about humans. Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
Denying the existence of Arab culture, of which the Arabs are (rightly, in my opinion) very proud of, is racism. Not everybody has the same values and customs as you do.
That's like saying there is a european culture, it's nonsense.
Literally the second sentence in that wiki
Please do keep reading past. The next sentence (literally sentence #3) gives you: Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes:
And then a detailed list of shared-culture-related items.
- A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;[5][4]
- A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";[5]
- A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;[5]
- A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another.[5]
- Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe.
And then there are 15 categories from Music to Science to History, listing cultural similitudes or shared values.
What are you basing this on? Are "religious" Muslims some kind of True Scots Muslims? I'm willing to bet that if I speak to any of my Muslim neighbours none of them will agree with this.
And all swedish people are steppe barbarians who committed genocide against the local sami people.
"Palestine Partition Plan" is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), adopted on November 29, 1947. This resolution, officially titled "Future Government of Palestine," recommended the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem and its environs to be placed under a special international regime."
It only became the name for the land after the Bar Kockba revolt, the Romans named it such specifically to spite the Jews. And then it stuck when various powers controlled the land over time (Romans/East Romans aka. Byzantines, Caliphate, Ottomans, British).
Who proposed the Balfour Declaration 30 years prior?
Presumably during one of the frequent rounds of forceful expulsion from European states.
The entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came.
Can you name one Palestinian who has fought against Israel's occupation and is not considered a terrorist by you?
https://jcpa.org/the-parallels-between-yahya-sinwar-and-yass...
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of guerilla warfare you are not a terrorist. (Many palestinian fighters when there is an active conflict with Israel)
If you strike military targets of an occupation force in a time of relative peace, and your reignition of violence has no goal of achieving anything for your people, you are probably not a terrorist, but probably doing something wrong and stupid and horrible that hurts your own civilians, driven by nationalism or ideology or whatever. (Palestinian fighters on October 7 that struck military bases for example).
If you strike civilian targets or tage hostages, you are a terrorist. And worse if you do it at a time of relative peace to ignite violence against your own people. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi's have engaged in plenty of the latter since a long time.
By the way, if you level a building with 8 militants and 20 civilians that is brutal urban warcare but not terrorism. If you go to a festival and kill predominantly hundreds of civilians, that's terrorism.
Please explain your reading if you're going to make such personal attacks.
All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
You do not believe the above.
> All Muslims have their own agency. They are all humans capable of making their own decisions. And like all humans are happy to be held responsible for the decisions they make.
And I'm not sure why you feel I don't recognise the agency of Muslims?
As I said previously please make an argument or explain your position and I'll respond to it, but it feels absurd to entertain these seemingly baseless ad hominems.
I grew up in a conflict zone and feel that I have some understanding of the group dynamics. That's totally reasonable and I encourage you to ask yourself if your apparent anger and incredulity here is misplaced.
No. Jews migrated to Ottoman controlled land legally and paid for it. Palestinians were offered their own country but rejected that offer in favor of trying to expel the Jews and taking their land. Then they spend the next 70 years trying and failing to destroy Israel and rejecting every offer of their own country.
This is getting old, do you have any fresh hasbara for me?
Palestinians need to take responsibility for reacting to the formation of Israel in the most self-destructive way possible.
Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion.
And yet, the previous government of Iran had friendly relations with Israel, as do some other Arab and Muslim countries.
The US also has friendly relations with countries with whom it disagrees vehemently, and that do (IMO) far worse things than Israel does.
I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either.
People still have a living memory of specific properties in specific locations that they were forced out of and are now occupied by other families, often with some of their relatives killed in the process That applies both to places in Israel proper (displaced in 1940s to 1960s) and to Gaza and the West Bank (in the time since then). Even before the most recent war in Gaza, any Palestinian could be forced out of their home at any moment by an Israeli settler with no recourse.
So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is.
Land it didn't own. Most people can be very generous with what they don't have.
Try to read a non fantasy sionist history book…
Well, considering that Israeli's are occupying land that rightfully belongs to someone else, I'd say not very well indeed. It's the final major European colonial outpost, and its fighting hard not to go the way of Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and a long long list of others.
First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries.
Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations.
The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers.
It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced.
Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return.
Maybe, but obviously the other side thinks exactly the same.
Religious wars were lots of fun five centuries ago. They will be funnier still in the nuclear age.
I believe this is very important to highlight, and, unfortunately, many Iranians will suffer because of the Iranian government's views.
But I do believe there are viewpoints held on both sides that can make achieving peace in that region extremely difficult. Consider these two video excerpts (You only need to watch about 10 seconds for each)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYoa9hI3CXg&t=1948s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEiL_5h14pY&t=452s
Jews were often well treated and flourished in the earlier Islamic caliphates.
But with the formation of a Jewish Israel the conflict. Generally in Islamic belief there must be an Islamic caliphate with Sharia Law. Jerusalem is considered one of the holy sites of Islam and therefore belongs to that caliphate.
That’s contrasted with Judaism and Israel being the land promised to the Jews. Though modern Israel was largely founded by secular Jews so it’s a bit more complicated on that front.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkUVIj3KWY
The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. The price the put on human life (their own people as much as anyone else) is low, and they're all for martyrdom. With Iran, you cannot assume it's a just a deterrent in a cold war. You have to assume an increased likelihood that they will actually use them.
Compare the number of deaths caused by Iranian weapons and those caused by Israeli weapons in the last year. Or 5 years, or 10.
Do you have some other way of defining ‘death cult’?
Nukes are good as a deterrent, not good as a weapon.
Why is an Iranian weapon somehow different do one held by any other country? Countries with them usually don’t use them, and the one that has is attacking Iran.
You failed to answer my question. Why?
Check out YouTube and see the high rate of ballistic missiles thrown at Israel. Those existed for years, and were developed for this exact purpose. It just so happened they didn't have the nuclear warhead yet.
I repeat the question: are you really asking why a country would be afraid of a regime which is literally raining ballistic missiles over them?
How is it supposed to work ?
As for their religious views, hasn't their supreme leader declared multiple times that nuclear weapons are prohibited by their religion?
The truth is that Iran doesn't want to take out the holy sites in Israel and if martyrdom were the real goal, then Iran would have started all-out war with Israel decades ago.
This video got blocked after publishing by a political action group / NGO, it came back online only after dozens of other YouTube channels reported that.
And yes - this video depicted life of people in a theocracy ;-)
I can go to USA, interview a few crazies (and there's a lot of them) and then make a documentary.
Or not. Perhaps, we understand the nuances of that because we were raised in a christian culture, but don’t understand the nuances of martyrdom in islam because we weren’t raised in a muslim culture? I know that’s true for me, i assume that’s true for any non-muslim who claims stuff about the core of islam.
Stop being so naive.
In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite.
Be serious.
This is no justification to ignore international law. But that's dead now. Nobody will ever care again until we're done with the next big war or something. Bomb away...
There's no natural law setting the mullahs against the existence of Israel, as I said they think and vocally declaim publicly that it is divine law. Don't believe me, just look up what they say.
I do think the way this is being handled is a travesty though. There was a functioning agreement with international monitoring in place in 2016 and Trump tore it up. Since then Iran has increased their enrichment capacity, and their stockpile of enriched material by 22 time above what they committed to in that agreement. Canceling that deal was a foolish blunder that had lead us to this.
Ultimately the only path to long term peace has to be the fall of theocratic rule in Iran, but that's a mater for the Iranian people. It's quite possible the nuclear question could have been managed, but just as with NAFTA Trump saw personal political advantage is scrapping an old deal in order to rebrand it as his better deal, but dropped the ball because he doesn't understand the geopolitics, and here we are.
Trump wanted another deal and told Bibi not to attack. Bibi didn't want that and attacked. Trump jumped on the bandwagon and now everybody is talking about him again.
I don't particularly blame the Israelis though, and there's broad support for this over there, it's not just Netanyahu.
Secular discussion about conflict in the Middle East frequently discounts the possibility that self-professed religious fundamentalists are in fact religious fundamentalists. A lot of Israeli settlers really do believe that they are fulfilling a sacred duty. A lot of Palestinians really do believe that becoming a martyr for al-Aqsa guarantees them an eternity in paradise. A lot of American Evangelicals really do believe that conflict in the Middle East will bring about the day of judgement.
I might believe that we live in a godless and meaningless universe in which death is final, but that puts me in a very small minority. Most people -throughout history and across the world - frequently act in ways that are totally irrational from a secular perspective, but are perfectly logical within a framework of faith.
Why? What do Hezbollah or the Houthis care about the world? They fight Israel, which is a genocidal regime.
This even ignoring the ludicrous idea that if they got a nuclear weapon they could deliver it anywhere.
You said israel regime as genocidal? What was the cause of all this issues? How many was killed in october attacks in israel? Why did they held hostages from different countries? So, yes i strongly believe that those terrorist doesnt need a reason to attack. Their goal is global islamisation. Khamenei had openly said that their number 1 enemy is America.
There is nothing racist or dehumanising about acknowledging cultures different from your own. In fact, I would say that assuming everybody adheres to your cultural values is the racist position.
Besides, the fanatical leader of that country has said in clear terms that they consider nuclear weapons forbidden by their religion. They have also said in clear terms that oppose the "Israeli regime" and the existence of Israel as a political entity- that's what they mean by "destruction of Israel", not nuking it.
Sadly, I highly doubt that the regime of the ayatollahs is going to act like that, instead of fighting fanatically to the bitter end and the last drop of Iranian blood if need be. (A bitter end is very far from the current situation though.)
The Basic Laws, which sort of comprise the makeshift constitution of Israel, don't seem to make any religious references, but rather refer to the founding UN principles like human rights.
Even civil courts are allowed to refer to holy texts if the law is not clear.
I'm guessing from the words and actions of Iranian leaders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
Also, let’s leave rhetoric aside. What is the actual record of violence between Israel and anyone else? It’s not even close https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
Israel here is the aggressor. Not acknowledging that makes no sense and doesn’t leave grounds for any meaningful discussion.
In 2015, former Basij chief and senior RIGC officer, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, stated in an interview that the destruction of Israel is "nonnegotiable". In addition, according to the Times of Israel, Naqdi said that during the summer Gaza conflict with Israel, a significant portion of Hamas’s weaponry, training, and technical expertise was provided by Iran.[27][28] In 2019, Naqdi made a direct call for the destruction of Israel during a televised interview. Naqdi asserted that the Zionist regime must be "annihilated and destroyed," asserting "This will definitely happen." He declared his intention to one day raise the flag of the Islamic Revolution over Jerusalem.
Also, you seem to be putting a lot of weight from words 10 years ago by former officials when current Israeli officials including the head of state is clearly voicing support for genocide.
The otherising of brown Muslims comes easy.
Even by your own logic, do you believe that having a country threaten your existence is not reason enough to want them destroyed?
Do they? What is this based on? My understanding was that they were reacting to a pattern of imperialism of which Israel was the crown jewel. Is there actually something inherent about the Shi'ite religion which says Israel must fall?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
Framing it as a religious opposition paints Iran as an irrational actor which can't be reasoned with, when it appears to me that it's behaving the way it's been pushed to behave by encroaching colonial forces.
I don't believe in Islam or in Judaism but I do believe in radical discourse and trying to understand the position of the other. Saying "it's their religion to be bloody violent and destructive, what can we do?" throws any space for understanding out of the window.
Their religious leaders like literally come out and say, "This is based on our religious beliefs."
Henry VIII used religious justification for breaking off from the pope as well but surely we're grown up enough to recognise those movements came about from a desire for political autonomy more than disagreements over bible interpretations?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
>In 2024, Ali Khamenei told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "The divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea."
In particular check out the "clerics" section of that article for the statements of multiple leading religious authorities in the regime on the religious justifications.
But just for argument's sake and to respect your position I always want to point out that your quote subtly talks about "the Zionist entity" and not about Israel or Jews. So I can assume that you're equating Israel with Zionism, which is arguably fair. Now the question I would have is do we recognise the inherent violence of Zionism and, if so, why do we decentre that in our conversation and instead focus on the reaction to it?
It is important to understand how we got here, to understand what might be plausibly achievable.
In the 1920s after Britain kicked out Turkey there was a partition proposal. The Jewish leadership at the time agreed saying they would accept a land "the size of a tablecloth". The Palestinian leaders refused absolutely and demanded the expulsion of all Jews. Their leader declared "It is impossible to live alongside the Jews" and threatened "A river of blood".
In 1937 there was another proposal in which 'Israel' would have been the small region from Tel Aviv north to the Lebanese border. The Palestinians rejected it out of hand.
In 1948 the Palestinians were granted considerably more land than they have now for their own independent state, but refused partition as unacceptable. Five Arab nations attacked Israel with the intention to destroy it completely. The General Secretary of the Arab League at the time Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, who personally orchestrated the attack declared the intention of the war was "An extermination and a momentous massacre".
Jordan and Egypt annexed the West bank and Gaza for the next 2 decades during which the Palestinians had no political rights or freedoms. The Palestinian leaders never pushed for the formation of an independent state during this time, and Israel took both regions during the Six Day War.
So if we include the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have been offered an independent state of their own four times, and every time they have rejected it completely as unacceptable. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" literally means free of Jews. Over and over, the Palestinian leadership have made that crystal clear. An independent state of their own alongside Israel in any shape or form, in their own statements and openly declared intentions has persistently been rejected.
Meanwhile Egypt and Jordan have realised that Israel is no threat to them, in fact both states have suffered coup attempts by Palestinians. They are now functionally Israeli allies against the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia has now pretty solidly moved in the same direction.
if you include the oslo accords, the narrative that palestinians are the one and only problem breaks down. the only time there was agreeable terms being set, and israelis assasinated their leader for proposing them.
i wouldnt expect america to ever be favourable to carving out a new independent state of Venesuela from colorado because theres a lot of non-citizen refugees. you can see americans today pushing back against having more immigrants, too and removing the people that are here
Note that I'm not a fan of Israel, condemn their genocide in Gaza, and consider Netanyahu a war criminal. I'm also not a fan of this attack on Iran and prefer a peaceful and democratic overthrow of that regime. But calling the attack unprovoked is not entirely correct; Iran spends a lot of time provoking Israel.
For one, Balfour's illegal concession of Palestine to the Israelis had the clear strategic purpose of keeping pan-Arabism at bay. The ensuing establishment of Israel - by the UNSCOP, in contravention of international law - had the side effect of turbocharging settler colonialist violence (1948 and ongoing) and expansionism (e.g. 1967 annexations).
That was the background to the 1953 CIA coup, and the eventual Islamic revolution in 1979. Sure, it's not the liberal democratic outcome Iranians would've liked, but it reclaimed sovereignty lost, and they are aware of the historic role of Israel and their strategic and moral position in relation to it, regardless of their regime.
Bottom line, if we look closely at who really is threatening whom, the reactions of the Iranians are probably quite understandable
No shit the result of 1979 is not what the Iranians wanted; there have been frequent democratic uprisings since then. Most Iranians didn't really care one way or the other about Israel, although you can't really blame them for not liking the US. And Israel has never really had an issue with Iran. But it's the ayatollahs who have been extremely hostile towards Israel, and have spent decades funding Hezbollah attacks against Israel.
I'm not going to defend Israel; they've committed plenty of crimes. And war crimes. But almost entirely against the Palestinians, not against Iran.
The Middle East is complex, and there's no simply good vs evil there, but the ayatollahs are definitely not on the side of good.
Religion is just another ideology, and it s not like Islam has a specific position about nuclear energy
Energy is fine, but nukes are haram. This is THE reason they haven't built any nukes the last 40+ years.
Changing a religious decree of that nature requires a very big excuse which has never existed. Israel and the US threatening Iran's existence and threatening to kill millions of Muslims is the ONE thing I can think of that would allow Khamenei an "out" to actually build a nuke.
By this I mean the religious ideological move is eternal punishment for what they deem unsatisfactory or eternal bliss for compliance, no other branch.
Other ideologies invoke similar (infinite growth in capitalism, e.g.) but those are hyperbole for proselytization. An ideology that attempts to persuade with either the most egregious stick possible or the most delicious carrot possible makes religion the least palatable of ideologies.
You're misunderstanding their position and that's why it seems idiotic to you: they stopped working on building nukes back in 2003, after that date all they did was using the ability to get nukes as a negotiation leverage, that's how they got JPCoA in 2015 and since the US unilaterally left it in 2018 and the rest of the Western world failed to keep it working (that would have required courage to anger the US), Iran was seeking to force a new deal by raising the bar a bit: they announced back in 2022 that they'd enrich up to 60% in order to increase their negotiation leverage, but they didn't go past that stage nor did they work on the militarization tech in the meantime, because they weren't aiming to get the bomb at all.
Today strike on Iran nuclear sites endangers millions of American and Israeli lives. It teaches Tehran the same lesson North Korea learned long ago. That only a nuclear deterrent secures a regime survival. To believe Iran will absorb this blow without striking back is not merely naive, it is dangerously delusional.
It is also clear any Iranian nuclear critical assets were moved to alternative secret sites long before the strikes, as satellite photos show: "Satellite images show activity at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility before U.S. air strikes" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/22/satellite-images-show-activi...
Your premise of Israel not targeting civilians is not serious. Just turn a TV channel on that isn't US mainstream media (which is actively manipulating to you).
Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.
And then twenty years from now everyone will say they were always against it.
During Iraq the US military deployed some insanely creative strategies with the deployment of concrete- yet nothing meaningful was actually built for the people of Iraq...
And if anything, the last 20 years taught us that revolutions imposed from the outside never work
regime change has never worked, not with actual boots on the ground, let alone targeted air strikes.
Regime change and nation building worked so well in Afghanistan and Iraq. Onward to more death and suffering, I guess.
where is DOGE when you actually need them?
But can you define what "this moment" is that they have been waiting for?
I don't think "this moment" helps them along the way. It is rather a reason for more internal repression.
Couple that with a population of at least 80 million people who hate the regime and only didn’t fight back because the regime had physical power over them.
This also accounts for the bias in people you meet as the ones who like Iran tend to continue living there.
There were numerous groups of Iranians protesting against Israel's actions and in support of the Palestinians. These are Iranians living abroad so can be expected statistically to be less supportive of the current government than the average Iranian resident.
The counter-protest, mainly of pro-Israel demonstrators, this time also had Iranians, demonstrating against the current regime (and broadly in support of Israel). All the Iranian flags in this very small group were the Shah-era design with the lion.
The visibly Iranian groups in the pro-Palestinian demo vastly outnumbered the counter protest. They seemed quite ideologically diverse. There were some people holding pictures of the ayatollah with the words 'No Surrender'. But there were also groups with the sign "don't bomb us and claim it's for women's rights" (can't remember exact wording). Groups including women with headscarves, other groups with only bare headed women. As well as the current official flag with the swords, I saw people holding the lion flag, and others with the neutral tricolour without emblem. So at least some of the people present were anti the current regime, but supported the Palestinians in the current conflict.
Obviously a very selective sampling for many reasons, but far from what you might expect if almost all Iranians were united against their current government.
On the reddit NewIran sub, they were mocking a picture of somebody at one of those rally’s holding a giant IRGC flag… upside-down.
I wouldn’t use numbers of “useful idiots” showing up at rallies as a way of demonstrating internal support for the Iranian regime.
Surveys suggest around 70-80% are anti-regime, which makes sense considering the regime’s history of hangings and imprisonment for minor offenses. The people of Iran want the regime to end.
People never, ever, under any circumstances, want to be attacked and bombed by another country. Not even the biggest dissidents rotting in regime jails would welcome this. Not even a little bit.
It is one thing to not like the political leadership, but another thing if the government oppresses the population.
Those of us in America are privileged that we can’t fathom what that means.
Depends on the effectiveness of the bombing.
No, 80 million people don't want to end the regime. Westerners can't fathom the fact that not everyone wants to live in a democratic free-for-all.... so clearly anyone who doesn't deserves bombing.
Pathetic. Imperialism is encoded in the DNA of Americans at this point.
they do have a massive popular support issue over there
I didn't say there are no supporters, but there is an asymmetry between supporters and protestors. Supporters are being brought by buses, are often members of the Basij or other government functions and generally have incentives to do so. Protestors however risk extremely painful death and torture.
There is support for the regime, usually outside of large cities, but there's a reason there were large protests in almost every single year since 2016
for some reading you can take a look at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/reader/read-online/234eb6fd-85...
There's over 40% of responders that do not claim their religion is Shia, but rather Atheist, Humanist, etc. That's more than the people that define themselves as Shia, in a Shia theocracy. This also correlates with skepticism of government media and rejection of Hijab
Oh, enough to look at Libya, Syria, Iraq, to see what happens next:
1. Lots of infrastructure would be destroyed. It's the first thing NATO does in any invasion: bomb powerplants, water treatment plants, airports, hospitals, business centers (remember, that Iraq invasion started with destroying Baghdad business center, it was shown in all Western media). Infrastructure is super-expensive to rebuild, many countries in the world have no resources to build decent infrastructure.
2. At least several millions of Iranians would die. It's obvious. Somebody's moms and dads, somebody's children. The bombs do not choose. And we all know that West is indifferent to the deaths of non-Western non-white population (remember, e.g. killings and war crimes in Afghanistan).
3. In the end the country will end up in half-feudal anarchistic ruins (like Libya) or with "democratic" puppet government. Any outcome will allow selling Iran oil and gas to the West for the price of water, further lowering living standards of Iran.
I fail to see a single benefit for anyone living in Iran.
Internet used to joke about US "freedom bombs", but it's taken quite seriously and positively there.
People lack common sense, but not their appetite to ingurgitate the daily three meals that the propaganda machines prepared for them.
Trying to find a clear line of "good vs evil guys" is bound to led you down a bad path. Is how Iran treat people very shitty and outright evil? Yes. Does that mean other countries should feel OK with invading them to "liberate" them? Probably no and feels like a very dangerous line of thinking that could be used to invade basically any country, including the US itself.
I don't think many people are arguing that Iran is some beacon of democracy and treating their people right, but regardless of that, we tend to favor sovereignty of nations for a good reason, yet it seems like some countries still struggle with accepting this.
Switch "Israel" with "Iran" and you have basically the same thing, but seemingly waging war against Israel would never be an option, would it? Because we accept the country's own sovereignty, as we should do with all countries.
Personally, I don't understand why Iran had to meddle in Palestine. When Palestine's own neighbors don't give a rat's ass for the suffering of the Palestinians, who are these mullahs sitting 1000 mi away to get involved?
After the first Gulf War itself, Iranian rulers should have seen the light and stayed tf out of the US's way (and Israel might just be the 51st state, practically speaking). Just work on improving your economy, educating your kids, building up your infrastructure and turn Iran into one of the world's top economies.
But noooo...... those idiots had to get involved in Palestine: supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.... WHY? Just why?!?
> Just work on improving your economy, educating your kids, building up your infrastructure
Who cares about all this secular nonsense. Killing Jews, that's what god wants you to do. Doesn't matter if you sacrifice a 100x your own muslim brothers in the process. They die as martyrs. That's an express ticket to paradise.
I think this makes a theocratic regime even more dangerous than a (more or less) secular autocrat like MBS. These guys ultimately want something that's not in this world. How can make a deal with that?
There is also hatred within the Israeli population against Arabs and Iranians in the region, and still that's no reason to justify continued aggression.
I'm seeing these no-nuance, dehumanizing, views everywhere on this thread, though I'm not sure why I expected better. Maybe because this "Iran big bad" rhetoric closely mirrors what happened during the Iraq war, and only helps justify further escalation.
[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts
Countries run by dictators need an external enemy to paint as the cause for problems.
Iran’s options here are to bomb US bases, which are a lot closer by, mine the Strait of Hormuz, blow up oil infrastructure in nearby countries who are harboring US bases.
This might risk Iran a much larger war but the alternative of doing nothing and showing the world they won’t defend themselves is worse.
The US will again bankroll another big, more expensive war to the tune of trillions more in debt. Another decade of war ahead with no end in sight.
Meanwhile, new enemies will be made for the US as a young generation grows up living through this. The cycle repeats.
Its hard to think of a full scale war that was started by the U.S. that didn't have popular approval at the time it was launched.
War is better for regime survival than peace. This is a country ruled by a very scared elite that isn’t held accountable for anything and whose only means of survival is creating continuous distractions from domestic failures. And it’s similar in Iran.
Nice.
Not when your adversary has air superiority and they can just kill at will the leaders and elite and not the schmucks. Israel's tactics is to kill important people and links.
From Rey Teixeira.
So obviously not historically low.
In the US the election might have been tempered with, according to newest reports, so the government might not even be actually democratically elected and Trump is playing the autocrat's playbook, going as far as arresting political opponents without a warrant.
Iran no question there.
That makes 3 out of 3 in my book.
I am not so sure your statement is footed on a solid base these days.
Israel’s decades long subjugation of the Palestinian people hasn’t brought them closer to peace
Recent events have convinced me the goal is not peace, but extermination.
this isnt software bro. its probabilistic and has high variance. even then the expected value is vietnam
There's not been a President like the current incumbent.
>...decided on his own to strike without congress.
The US defense establishment has been looking to attack Iran for decades. "Decided on his own", seems inaccurate in this regard. The outrage over unauthorized uses of military force is largely performative partisan outrage. Although I would personally regard it as unconstitutional, it is the established norm for US Presidents to order airstrikes. There are very few politicians who have been consistent in their opposition to this.
There's always been an authorization for military force even if it's a blanket one and they claim they're fighting ISIS, at least there has been deniability. Here there's no authorization, it's unconstitutional. I don't care about partisan politics. Most politicians are scummy.
Let’s say Trump decides to order an invasion. What would happen then? Mass protests? Surely. Impeachment? No way. Military decides enough is enough and removes him? Definitely not. He realizes how unpopular this move is and backs down? Lol. Lmao.
From what can be glanced from the news seeping through it seems that the population has been largely ready for it for a while now.
This "oh the Iranians actually want to be bombed" stuff is absolutely nonsense.
Change of the US regime would help lessening the risk of a prolonged war.
From what can be glanced from the news seeping through it seems that the population has been largely ready for it for a while now.
It's also breeding a generation of young Americans that consider Israel their enemy: https://time.com/6958957/growing-antisemitism-young-american...
Remember that in the middle east, Iran is considered a dire enemy.
Their actions do not follow the conclusion you state.
What is clear now though to any Iranian is that they should get nuclear weapons asap. Diplomacy is just a tool used by the west to string you along while they get ready to bomb you
Of course, Iran very much wanted the ability to make a nuke, and they probably could have had one ready in 1 or 2 years. But the proof put forward in defense of this strike is claiming Iran was weeks away from nukes. That proof is dubious.
(Also interesting to consider how US retreat from the nuclear deal under Trump 1 has affected and shaped the current situation)
It's a dire enemy because they're Shia and the rest (with some exception in Eastern Saudi Arabia) are Sunni.
But that doesn’t matter anymore
0. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056zqn6vvyo
IAEA also confirmed that Iran didn't have ongoing military nuclear project.
The reason why they raised their enrichment level was to raise their bargaining power to force the US to come back to the negotiation table in an attempt to get rid of the sanctions.
They almost succeeded since US and Iran were supposed to meet last Sunday, but that was not taking Israel into account, which killed the chief negotiator and convinced Trump to bomb Iran just 3 days in the “two weeks” negotiation deadline he had set earlier this week.
Quite different from the Iraq war.
> In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dhs-thomas-fugate-c...
That the climate crisis is the biggest threat to our security is the biggest fallacy of our times. It's not that climate change is unimportant, just that it needs to be evaluated to its fair potential consequences, compared to e.g. an all-out war.
> ... talk about the ways in which climate change is a crime against our children.
For example, how is this phrase supposed to work, rhetorically. Shaming people into joining your cause?
I do not believe that it would help. Respectability politics does not have an especially strong track record. Complaints merely shift.
I believe very deeply that climate change is a crime against our children. This is not me hyperbolizing.
Gnah, just find your supporters elsewhere...
The nazi party member Pascual Jordan contributed significantly to quantum physics but it's rarely mentioned because of that association. On the flip side, also the nazis ignored his suggestions for advanced weaponry, to their detriment I would imagine, because he valued jewish scientific contributions and so was considered unreliable politically. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascual_Jordan, discovered via AstroGeo podcast)
Also consider that you're on hacker news. Hacker ethics, or at least the version I've internalised, include judging people by what they say, not who is saying it (race, gender, and authority are commonly mentioned, but charismacy could also easily fall in that category)
Feels a little bit narcissistic.
But I think it was a bad move of hers to make the organisation "Fridays for Future" she had founded pivot towards other issues other than Climate Change. She should have kept her engagements separate.
Additionally, military operations are terrible for the climate. The US military is (was?) responsible for more pollution/emissions than most countries, for instance.
I guess she’s hoping she can help humanitarian aid being delivered to Gaza where people are starving and dying right now.
I respect her for her efforts in both goals, even if I care more about handling climate change.
Is that the case? she supports many other causes too, and they do not conflict the idea of climate change being the greatest risk. In her own words climate justice and social justice are inseparable and I can see that point.
We are now discussing the narcissism of Greta, a well meaning activist, rather than that of the president of peace, who just bombed Iran. The narcisism of the man who ran on "drill baby drill" is somehow acceptable, was exactly my point.
So, its very fair for people to pick up on it, he movements are very public as she is a public figure now.
Joking ofc, but any oil price spike will have more impact that policy changes at this point.
You can't look at what the leaders of these countries say. You look at what they do. Turkey's population, for example, is extremely sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. Erdogan will even get up there and bang the drums about Israel's evils. But that's just to placate the populace. In reality, he's done absolutely nothing when he could fatally wound Israel if he so chose.
There are allegations Erdogan's family (his son, specifically) is still doing business with Israel. Israel and Turkey have largely cooperated with the collapse of Syria. Both regimes simply cannot exist without material support, arms specifically, from the US.
What could turkey do? Cut off Israel's energy imports. IIRC ~40% of Israel's energy comes from Azerbijan from a pipeline that transits Turkey. Erdogan could absolutely shut it off if he wanted to. That would absolutely cripple Israel.
But he doesn't. Because he's not actually opposed to Israel.
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/17/heres-a-look-at-tur... [1] https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/dark-and-dangerous-...
So, I imagine there are perhaps unconventional options available to a country which is fully willing to fund terrorist groups for decades against a country with a very large amount of largely unprotected infrastructure.
But who knows? It just seems a bit premature to argue Iran's defeat. Feels a bit... mission accomplished.
If only those who advocated for war were forced to fight in them.
But I dont think we are invading
Obama attacked Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. We aren’t there now are we?
December 1, 2012 - 300th drone strike on Pakistan.
Obama executed 563 drone strikes on Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan alone while in office.
I’m scratching my head on this because Pakistan was and is still a US ally, but I guess you mean the Bin Laden operation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan
Makes sense, they were in the tribal areas where I assume the government was losing control of their monsters.
Clinton - Yugoslavia 1999
Obama - Airstrikes on Libya in 2011
Goes back to the War Powers Act of 1973.
9/11 was not a direct response to any US invasion, but the London and Madrid bombings were a direct response to the second Iraq invasion. I would be surprised if there will be no terrorist attacks on American soil.
Iran is a state which cannot project power. If they do try to hit the homeland via proxy you can almost guarantee we will hit back harder.
They didn’t do much after we killed their general who also was a sponsor of terrorism in the region. Any effects will be regionalized
There will be another 9/11.
Then this just confirms that Iran is a terrorist regime.
Iran will do some nominal attacks. There is little power projection that they will do. I bet they will focus their attacks on Israel which has been happening already.
You'll get a decade of terrorism, and the more you bomb Iran the worse it will get.
But why does Iran get to take workers hostage for 444 days in 1979, conduct Beirut embassy bombing in 1983, then the Beirut barracks bombing in same year, 1982-1991 Hezbollah (Iran sponsored) kidnappings of Americans in Lebanon, TWA 847 Hijacking, December 1983 Kuwait Embassy Bombing, June 1996 Khobar Towers Bombing, multiple EFP attacks on US forces in Iraq, May 2011 Camp Liberty Rocket Attack, 2011 IRGC plot to assassinate US officials, Dec 2019 Kirkuk base attack, etc
How is this any different than your 9/11 scenario and Iran has been doing it for 40 years?
I'm not saying it's easy, but there are many soft targets in America.
But yeah, who knows. The wise choice here is to go home and not play. The US and Israel are not about to invade with ground forces.
And if they were it'd be without support from European countries.
It does not mean that their ability to gather intelligence or use it is 100% gone. It most likely means they are a bit in disarray because of their top-down command structure. And maybe it takes a day or two until they put someone in charge.
One data point I heard recently was 80% of Iranians oppose the current regime. That said I've also heard there is wide support for Iran to have a nuclear program. Presumably as a matter of national pride. I would still imagine the secular population to be less inclined to go to war with Israel in general.
The only Iranians I've personally talked to are ones that live in the west. They generally want to have peace with Israel and want to see the regime removed. Again very anecdotally they are still not happy about Israel bombing Iran but if the regime is actually somehow magically removed I don't think attacking Israel would be a high priority for a hypothetical secular or democratic regime.
> if the regime is actually somehow magically removed I don't think attacking Israel would be a high priority
Attacking Israel hasn't been a high priority for Iran. When Israel bombed an Iranian consulate, Iran referred it to the security council and waited, but the security council took no action. When Israel carries out an assassination within Iran, Iran did the same thing. Only after the UN refused to do anything to hold Israel to account did Iran retaliate. Then recently Israel launched a massive series of strikes against Iran, assassinating top members of its military and blowing up apartment buildings. It seems clear that the Iranian government didn't want to go to war with Israel, but at a certain point they ran out of options.
First letter: https://digitallibrary.un.org/nanna/record/4043282/files/A_7...
Second letter: https://digitallibrary.un.org/nanna/record/4055716/files/S_2...
It is interesting that you made no mention of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, not Houthi in Yemen. All are well-known proxies for Iran to militarily harass Israel. They all receive direct funds and weapons from Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqu0L0PGOIw
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
[0] https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
I meant that demographically, if your populace isn't as poor, battle hardened and religious (like Afghanistan) maybe going into a long ground war is less politically feasible?
In Afghanistan they had basically just been fighting a war, where the last war in Iran was 30 years ago?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
Excerpts:
> 95,000 Iranian child soldiers were casualties during the Iran–Iraq War, mostly between the ages of 16 and 17, with a few younger
> The conflict has been compared to World War I: 171 in terms of the tactics used, including large-scale trench warfare with barbed wire stretched across trenches, manned machine gun posts, bayonet charges, human wave attacks across a no man's land, and extensive use of chemical weapons such as sulfur mustard by the Iraqi government against Iranian troops, civilians, and Kurds. The world powers United States and the Soviet Union, together with many Western and Arab countries, provided military, intelligence, economic, and political support for Iraq. On average, Iraq imported about $7 billion in weapons during every year of the war, accounting for fully 12% of global arms sales in the period.
But given the size of the existing Iranian population and geography, and the lack of any significantly sized pre-existing anti-government military faction, I’m not sure the US military is large enough to even occupy Iran in the first place, absent a draft.
Hopefully Iran is the one that blinks for the reasons above.
Can you really sell "we'll be bombing civilians for years"?
Israel is very clearly, without any question or doubt, a serious threat to every one of its neighbors.
EDIT, clearer map: https://www.islam21c.com/wp-content/uploads/The-alarming-det...
Half joking: (ignoring Trump's recent "threats") Is the US a threat to Canada or Mexico?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonyad
You can't really compare WWII dumb bombs dropped from 25,000 feet to modern precision weapons that can hit precisely the weakest point on a target, times thousands of targets, within the span of a few hours or days.
I mean, we literally just watched a massively successful strategic bombing campaign over the last week! Desert Storm was massively successful, Iraqi Freedom (the actual invasion, pre-nationbuilding part) was massively successful, Israel's bombing of Hezbollah was massively successful. I don't know how anyone can argue that strategic bombing with precision munitions isn't successful.
It appears that no matter what, no matter the technology involved (maybe with the exception of nukes), you always need grunts on the ground to hold it.
Yes, I agree that bombing random forest is not that useful.
The Iranian regimes favorite enemy just played their part to perfection, so we should expect that to compel the majority of Iranians to rally behind their government in the face of a brutal foreign invasion by not one but BOTH of their standard-bearer arch-nemeses.
Organized how? There’s no internet. I hope Kinko’s is still open because they’re going to need a lot of leaflets to organize anything meaningful.
Gringos have always been crazy, but now y'all are getting extra spicy. Qaddafi, Ukraine and now Iran. Get nukes or bust is the name of the game now.
What's another hundred?
PS. For every one of these adventures the US embarks on, it makes a strategy of nuclear proliferation more rational for those seeking it.
None of them would have done it if their victims had them.
Iran's contribution to inflicting misery, death, and indiscriminate destruction on the world is a rounding error in comparison, and its bound by the same formula of MAD as anyone else is.
Plus, the nuclear issue is the excuse, not the reason. Palestine, Lebanon, Syria (+ regime change, sorta), Iraq (+ regime change), Afghanistan and now Iran. All attacked repeatedly and extensively over the past two decades.
The first infliction point would be to see whether the regime intends to strike at US forces or do they intend to climb down. IMHO, that would be suicidal, but it doesn't mean they won't do it.
The second point is when they decide to end the war (they aren't doing well), and all the accusations start flying. Then there'll be political fallout.
- Trump declares mission accomplished. Looks tough to his base, appeases Israel and calls it a day
- Ditto for Israel. Declares Iran's nuclear ambitions over and re-affirms the friendship between the US and Israel
- Iran lobs a few more missiles at Israel in retaliation to provide legitimacy at home and moves on
Everyone declares victory and gets an off ramp.
Actually his base is very disappointed by him becoming a total neocon. The influential ones are already speaking out , harshly
So what can we expect:
* a ground invasion is pretty much out of the question considering the geography or Iran and its neighboring countries.
* Iran destroys every oil production and transport sites in the region (say good by to your election, Republican Party)
* they could fast produce the bomb and test it underground as a final warning
* OR they fail and resort to more desperate measure like a dirty bomb
* OR they fail and there is some sort of regime change
* Or there is some kind of extended war of attrition and it makes the refugee crisis from the past 20 years seem like it was a mere tourist wave.
In any case, this will accentuate the Qaddafi effect and more nations will follow the North Korea option of nuclear "unauthorized" nuclear dissuasion, which is also the case for Israel by the way. Talking of which, Israel will become politically radioactive in the world. Its support is already negative in nearly all countries and has dropped significantly in the US such as the evangelicals.
You mean they changed their mind and want to postpone the Armageddon now?
That statement is ignorant.
Do you believe all evangelicals believe the same thing, and that we want the end of the world to come immediately? Where would you get such a strange idea? I can assure you it is an ignorant thought.
Take it up with the sources listed in these articles:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical...
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseupr/2025/02/07/the-politics-of-ap...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/h...
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197956512
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
You are clearly ignorant of what views come under the heading of the evangelicals.
I am obviously proof standing before you that not all evangelicals believe what you suggested.
So who were you referring to?
But to be fair to the dispensational premillennialists, even many of them would consider the idea that Israeli (or US) military action is somehow "accelerating the end-times" to be distasteful – whether or not they think that action is justified in itself.
Yes, there is a subset of evangelicals that think along those lines. But not all of us.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christians_United_for_Israel
Are those ten million Evangelicals somehow not part of the mainstream? Like is it ten million outcasts that the majority of evangelicals do not claim? That seems unlikely due to the fact that the count of self-reported Christian Zionists is in the multiple tens of millions in the US.
https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2021/10/26/video-the-christ...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-sizeable-us-demographic-many...
What I think is going on here is you either do want to speak for all evangelicals, and want to convince people that they all believe what you believe, or you are somehow part of a community in which you haven’t heard of or spoken to nearly any of its members. These are the only two ways to make sense of the “who are you talking about?” question; you are either being willfully untruthful about tens of millions of evangelicals, or you simply, somehow, haven’t heard about tens of millions of evangelicals.
Would it be fair for me to assume that you are an Evangelical who doesn't support Israel's genocide under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for (i.e., the "apocalyptic accelerationism" handfuloflight refers to)?
Would it be fair for me to assume that handfuloflight's remark was solid but fell short in the generalizing way that jokes often lay, because of the possibility that there are Evangelicals who don't support Israel's genocide under the theological pretenses that other Evangelical's are known for because it's a terrible look and indicative of the contemporary fractures that capture the faith at large?
Both of ya'll need to be more forthright with your positions instead of performing this constipated do-si-do along the HN guidelines. Give me a good flame war, get flagged, ring up dang and the new dude, or just downvote each other.
The originating comment makes no hint that it is referring to anything less than 100%. It’s like saying “Black people think…” or “Women want….”, which invariably leads to some not funny generalization. Suggesting all evangelicals want the world to end immediately is in the same vein, IMHO.
Had your first statement been clear in referring to the subset of evangelicals ( instead of using a pronoun that refers back to the whole, evangelicals ), the statement would not have been properly called ignorant. As it stands, it reads as if all evangelicals wish for Armageddon without delay, which is an ignorant statement.
Everyone in this thread seems to have understood it was not a blanket statement, except you.
But here's the thing. That wasn't the suggestion. The bunch of links that he gave you don't suggest that.
At least my impression is that there are a considerable amount of Evangelicals that support whatever you think is going on in Israel under theological pretenses. Any notion of timing carried by his initial remark is likely attributed to this.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the sum of the links handfuloflight shared. Maybe he should have done us the courtesy of spelling it out for us instead, as in, when you asked him:
> Do you believe all evangelicals believe the same thing, and that we want the end of the world to come immediately?
He should've answered the question straight up instead of (what I interpret as) responding to the emotional side of your comment:
> Where would you get such a strange idea? I can assure you it is an ignorant thought.
With an indirect explanation of his point through a bunch of links.
I get it, that's the responsible thing to do when the discourse is trying to present itself as something other than a flamewar, or something like that, which it might as well just be so we can all be more direct and upfront with what we think and feel instead of doing this half-bunned Socratic dialogue.
On the other hand, if someone tries to insult your intelligence in a sophomoric way it makes sense to leave them to their own devices and if they're so smart themselves they can read between the lines on their own.
Anyway, these are non-rhetorical, please-say-yes-or-no questions:
* Would it be fair for me to assume that you are an Evangelical who doesn't support whatever you think is going on in Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for (i.e., the "apocalyptic accelerationism" handfuloflight refers to)?
* Would it be fair for me to assume that handfuloflight's remark was solid but fell short in the generalizing way that jokes often lay, because of the possibility that there are Evangelicals who don't support whatever you think is going on Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelical's are known for, because it has grave moral implications and indicative of the contemporary fractures that capture the faith at large?
If you're offended, then suck it up and be open about your vulnerabilities instead of goading the other party into an exchange that they're better suited than you at carrying on. Maybe they'll show you the empathy you desire, within reason.
I see handfuloflights remark as an attempted joke, alongside jokes that assume all Black people think alike, all women want the same thing, etc. Like those diverse groups, evangelicals are not a monolith, especially in political matters.
I’m not deeply offended, but I do want to signal that jokes generalizing people are generally not funny.
Especially when you say,
> I’m now making the point that generalizing evangelicals as a monolith that can ‘change their mind’ in unison is akin to generalizing people by race, gender, etc. I hope you are in agreement on that one.
And this is exactly why I raised my initial assumptions to you and why your answer was helpful.
When I asked:
> Would it be fair for me to assume that you are an Evangelical who doesn't support whatever you think is going on in Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for (i.e., the "apocalyptic accelerationism" handfuloflight refers to)?
What I tried to communicate was that my assumption is that your religious views are not in lock step with your political views in the ways that the generalization in question would suggest.
So when you say:
> Like many people, my religious views are not lock step with my political ones and the relationship is not straightforward.
This makes we want to understand what your views and their greater relationship are.
Additionally, are you upset that he made a generalization and that's all this is about? Or are you upset that he made a generalization that doesn't apply to you and you're trying to explain to us why that isn't the case. =
> I’m not deeply offended, but I do want to signal that jokes generalizing people are generally not funny.
Right. But I don't want to meander toward a discussion on humor, dry wit, et cetera, because although I identified the remark in question as a joke, that's all it is on the surface and it's implications are a lot more serious than that. Which is exactly why I would assume it isn't funny to you. And what makes the remark all the wiser in some ways, although not to you.
What I really want to figure out is what about his remark specifically upset you post-generalization, If according to your own answer to my assumption, you are an Evangelical who supports whatever you think is going on in Israel under the theological pretenses that other Evangelicals are known for.
[Previously I described that as "genocide", but I modified it because I don't to make it sound like I'm trying to manipulate you into agreeing to a part of a premise that you don't agree with. I'm trying to dialogue in as best of faith as I can].
I love handfuloflight. He doesn't know this. But I do. And he does know now. And I think his wit backfired, for the reasons I've already explained.
And as much as your offense constrains you to this odd posture that I feel so compelled to unravel, I think that his wit constrained him to come up with a concept ("apocalyptic accelerationism") that constrains him to now having to argue his way outside of a an ad-hoc generalization.
At this point, the generalization that handfuloflight makes isn't about "accelerating the apocalypse" as much as the influence that Israel's geopolitics have on Evangelical beliefs concerning the apocalypse.
From your side, this is what I want to learn. If you don't want to keep beating this HN thread, my email is in my profile.
And if handfuloflight feels like I've wronged him in anyway, he should let me know however he feels is suitable.
Still 80 != 100, and not all evangelicals are white males. Alienating the reasonable evangelicals isn’t going to help fix stuff.
But not all, or even most.
Like your pastor, at your evangelical church, preaches that these things are not literal?
Edit: As someone that grew up evangelical, and has had evangelical friends my entire life, it is very strange to see someone casually say that the rejection of biblical inerrancy is an evangelical thing. It stands in stark contrast to the theology that’s fundamental to the faith.
It is literally as odd as seeing someone get mad when another person says that sainthood or the Eucharist are fundamental tenets to Catholicism. I would certainly want them to clarify what exactly their priest was saying to make them feel otherwise.
It is a real religion with a real theology! “Evangelical” isn’t a vibe, it’s a distinct system of worship! Biblical prophecy is very fundamental and a strongly-held belief and value that is taught in every evangelical church I have ever heard of!
That aside, of course there are always small movements in every faith, but that isn’t usually super meaningful or helpful when talking about the larger group. I’m sure you can find some Catholics that don’t believe in transubstantiation but nobody is out here painting the church as being Eucharist-neutral.
This is not the same as believing in the second coming. It specifically deals with the timing, suggesting all evangelicals think alike and want Armageddon immediately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism
I would expect Israel to win the political battle as well. The world likes winners and Israel is going to be a winner here. It winning will also enable it to address some of the issues that are a concern. Without Iran backing up Palestinian militants it is going to be easier for Israel to make some concessions that it couldn't otherwise.
You can already see a change of tone in Europe. Especially that Iran is aligned with Russia against Ukraine.
I do not think Iran has any military options. Because it is not liked the Iranian regime does not have any political options either. So I have no idea what will happen-which makes the current situation so interesting to watch.
I am confused. So it is impotent or the greatest threat in the middle east?
All this talk of Iran getting a nuke to hit Israel... doesn't the Iranian government know that it would instantly be destroyed the moment they used a nuclear weapon of any kind?
None of this makes sense.
YES. They Absolutely know this. The point of an Iranian nuke is deterrence, and the reason Israel finds that intolerable is that Israeli policy is to maintain the ability to unilaterally raise the stakes of a conflict past any of its neighbors.
Iran doesn't just call death to America and death to Israel in every rally. They mean it. When they publish photos of their facilities I was shocked to see the US flag, then I understood it's on the floor. They walk on the Israeli and US flag every day in these places as an insult. As a westerner I find this pretty hilarious... But they are serious.
For reference I will point you to the Huttis... The main damage they do to Israel is waking up Israelis due to a missile alarm. As a result they lose hundreds of lives in bombings and crucial resources. That doesn't deter them. Hell, they don't even like the Palestinians since they are Sunni... It's a matter of being part of a Jihad.
Notice that this isn't true for all Muslims. The extremists are a death cult who believe that dying in a Jihad will send all of them to heaven. If they get a bomb it is very possible they won't care about the consequences in the same way a "normal" country cares about them.
I think if you look at the actions of Iran over the last 20 years and attempt to categorize it as one of either a geopolitical foe attempting to maintain some degree of control over their local surroundings OR an implacable suicidal death cult, one of those theories is going to fit the facts a whole lot better than the other, as evidenced by the fact that the Iranian regime is still in existence, despite all but daily attempts by both the US and Israel to bait them into attempting “suicide by global cop.”
The example I like to give is this, Ismail Haniyeh lost his sons to Israeli bombings. When he told his wife she smiled. This is not normal: https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/ismail-saniyeh-hamas-leader-barel...
Another example would be the Islamic Jihad attacks prior to 2023. The Islamic Jihad is an organization in Gaza that is similar in purpose to Hamas but distinct. They fired missiles into Israel which led to an Israeli attack. Hamas very explicitly stood down and sent through normal channels that it isn't interested in escalation. This created in Israel a false sense of security which led to the "success" of the Oct 7th attacks. When someone says they want to kill you and aren't afraid of death, it is prudent to believe them.
Neither one of us can enter the minds of these people, but they had plenty of chances to stand down and compromise. They chose not to do that. I wish Trump hadn't quit the nuclear deal because I would have liked to know how that would have turned out. But this is the situation we have right now...
Iran does build up global terrorism and has continued to do that for decades. Their path to nuclear weapons would mean they could continue doing that and no one would be able to do anything even if they never actually use the bomb.
To be clear, I’m not saying this to justify extreme or violent behavior, but to consistently act surprised when people act “irrationally” is to suggest either your definition of rational is wrong or your understanding of the circumstances are wrong. As the old joke goes, you can’t blame the mouse when the experiment fails.
So you're saying that there are motivations that would make you perform suicide bombings?
There are incentives by which you would sacrifice your children?
The vast majority of Iranians and Palestinians are good people. Same as everyone. The leadership and nutcases are vastly different than normal people.
I have friends in Gaza and the west bank. They are victims of these nutcases, this sort of mentality is tolerance of intolerance. They are victims of Hamas as the Iranian people are victims of their leadership.
> but to consistently act surprised when people act “irrationally” is to suggest either your definition of rational is wrong or your understanding of the circumstances are wrong
It isn't that they're irrational. Their decisions don't match western rationality which is based on different standards.
If you think that the death of your child will send him on a fast track to heaven that can seriously impact the rational choices you make down the line. It doesn't mean you can't speak calmly or even pretend to have a different set of objectives.
Their definition of reality leads them to a very different set of incentives and decisions. I understand exactly why the leadership wants nuclear weapons. They're paranoid and they aren't wrong in their paranoia, but that goes both ways. If Israel had listened to voices like this in the past then Saddam Husein and Assad would have had nuclear weapons. Luckily they don't and now we don't have to know what the Iranian leadership would have done. That's a good thing for everyone, especially for the Iranian people in the long term.
Assuming you're from the states, imagine the Mexican president calling death to America constantly, claiming it's their religious prerogative to destroy America and launch multiple terrorist cells against America... Then imagine them developing nuclear weapons... The USA would be justifiably paranoid.
Not condoning suicide attack but early zionists in Israel are all the same attacking civilians by the same actions, and after more than hundreds years the autrocities still continue until today albeit in different inhuman forms [1].
Worst now they're using indiscriminate military bombings against Palestinian people mostly women and children that has no proper protection from state military [2]. From your logic and claims, zionist and Israel military don't match your so called western rationality and seems to be based on different standards.
Perhaps all these inhuman actions based on the fact that they wrongly believe that they're God's chosen people destined for the Heavens and will not be touched by the Hell fire for whatever autrocities they've committed? [3].
[1] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_Pa...
[2] Zionist political violence [1]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_political_violence
[3] Chosen people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chosen_people
I don't sleep great with all the constant rocket alarms because we're under fire and I have to take my kids to the safe room.
I'm not defending the Israeli government and very much didn't vote for them. I do explain specific policies that do make sense and the logic behind them.
> Not condoning suicide attack but early zionists in Israel are all the same attacking civilians by the same actions,
Nope. First off the use of the word "zionist" as a derogatory term is problematic. It just means "patriot" or the desire to live in Israel.
There were early attacks before the formation of Israel that can be broadly described as terrorist attacks. The difference in the severity and violence is staggering. E.g. the worst example is the hotel bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
But here are some huge differences:
* They called in advance to warn about the bomb - this was ignored due to human error
* They were hunted down by moderate Israelis
> and after more than hundreds years the autrocities still continue until today albeit in different inhuman forms
Here's a different take. Palestinians spent the past 120 years constantly fighting the Jews. Losing and making things worse for themselves. Had they accepted the Jews right to exist by their side we could have all prospered. Israel gave them multiple chances to end this. It offered them a state twice. It even left Gaza and cleared the settlements. Instead the people voted in Hamas and proceeded to take the billions given to them in order to build rockets and a war machine against Israel.
I'm not saying that Israel is innocent here. But as a country Israel did pretty much anything one could expect under such a situation.
> Worst now they're using indiscriminate military bombings against Palestinian people mostly women and children
Again. Not true and relies on false numbers/narratives. Bombing is very discriminate and it's based on intelligence. It's coordinated with legal oversight. There are failures for sure, but Israel is doing more to avoid civilian deaths than any country in history.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/far-past-time-to...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/04/01/hamas-drop...
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/03/pa...
Hell, the IDF even calls people on the phone to make sure they evacuate: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67327079
> From your logic and claims, zionist and Israel military don't match your so called western rationality and seems to be based on different standards.
Nope. It's the fact that you believe a false narrative propagated by Hamas that is the problem. That gives them an incentive to keep sacrificing Palestinian civilians to erode support for Israel under the false hope that it will cause trigger the countries demise.
> Perhaps all these inhuman actions based on the fact that they wrongly believe that they're God's chosen people destined for the Heavens and will not be touched by the Hell fire for whatever autrocities they've committed?.
I suggest looking at the demographics of Israel. Israel has one of the highest ratios of secular/atheists. It is a deeply liberal state. Tel Aviv is more gay than San Francisco. My kids go to school with Muslim kids who are also Israeli citizens and 20% of the population.
Hell, if I watched the nonsense John Oliver says I'd probably also hate Israel. The fact is, it's a very different country from the narrative some people are driving. The supposed facts you chose are deeply cherry picked.
But the people you're supposedly defending would stone a gay person or a woman for the crime of being raped. Have been behind multiple terrorist attacks against civilians in busses, malls, coffee shops and embassies. Have killed Americans and held them hostage. These are bad people.
Worse, their goal isn't independence. Their goal is to kill 10M Israelis. From the river to the sea means kill all Israelis.
If you are direct descendants of the original Jews that have been living in the area for many centuries, I really hope that you and your family are safe from all the troubles.
But if you're of the new recent Jewish immigrants to the promised land of Israel, I've really bad news for you. Personally I'd migrate elsewhere than accidently caught in the perpetual crossfire [1],[2],[3].
> Israel has one of the highest ratios of secular/atheists
I'm not sure whether you're naive or pretending to be naive, but don't be fool to think that the Israel - Palestinian conflict is a nationalist or secular agenda, it's not and it's never was. It's highly religious matter and as you probably know the area surrounding Jerusalem is the holy land site for the three world's major religions namely Jewish, Christian and Islam, and the Jerusalem is mentioned specifically inside the Old Testament, New Testament and Quran, all originally in Semite based languages.
The root causes are religious and the solutions are also going to be religious based solutions, and those who think otherwise is either naive or in-denial, or both. There were already many many wars fought in the name of religions in Jerusalem, from David vs Goliath to subsequent Jewish wars with Persian and Roman, several hundreds years of Roman/Byzantine - Persian wars, several hundreds years of Crusades - Muslim wars, and now the Israel - Palestinian hundred years wars [1],[2],[3].
Fun facts, in the Quran Jewish people were mostly referred as Bani Israel (son of Israel or Yaakob/Jacob) not Yahudi as normally referred in the Arabic language, and both Cristians and Jewish together were referred as the People of the Books. The term 'Israel' is being used in the Quran more than thousands years ago, ironically it's being adopted by current Israel govt.
Another fun facts, most of the US Presidents (45) are descendants of the Eleanor of Aquitaine [4]. She's the Queen of France and later after her divorce, Queen of England. She's the mother of King Richard the Lionheart, the infamous Crusades King l, and also mother of King John Plantagenet. She's also the major sponsor and player of early Crusades [5].
[1] Jewish – Roman wars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_wars
[2] Roman - Persian Wars:
https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=resources&s=war...
[3] Crusades:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
[4] US Presidential Relationships to King John Plantagenet:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:US_Presidential_Relation...
[5] Eleanor of Aquitaine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine
That is an very problematic take. Some would might consider it racist.
Judia was here. That's a historic fact. Somehow you decided that the timeline for this being the "native country of a given people" is exactly in the right timeline to exclude the Jews. Like our right for the country has somehow elapsed because we experienced a genocide and didn't come back in time to reclaim our lost country...
Not that it matters but both me and my spouse were born in Israel as was the vast majority of this country. The claim that we're westerners is ludicrous and part of the typical anti-Israel propaganda.
My parents immigrated. My father escaped Morocco, my spouses father escaped Yemen. They both lost their homes as did 40% of the Jews who came to Israel from the east/south. Our mother's sides had vast families in Europe. Again a pretty common story...
> But if you're of the new recent Jewish immigrants to the promised land of Israel, I've really bad news for you. Personally I'd migrate elsewhere than accidently caught in the perpetual crossfire.
This sort of rhetoric is even more problematic. Many Jews are looking at people who say that and feel that Israel is our only home. This promotes Israeli nationalism and immigration to Israel.
Every time I'm in Europe and see the "pro-Palestine" demonstrators I'm thankful that I live in Israel. We might get rockets occasionally, but I feel safer walking the streets even if we have suicide bombers and shootings. At least we're together.
> I'm not sure whether you're naive or pretending to be naive, but don't be fool to think that the Israel - Palestinian conflict is a nationalist or secular agenda, it's not and it's never was.
I've been here for the past 50 years. I've had youth activities with Palestinian youths in the 80s and 90s. I know this very well.
I didn't hint in any waythat it's a secular conflict. It's 100% a religious conflict.
I said that Israel is mostly secular and had only one religious prime minister (for one year) and he had a Muslim party in his cabinet which was one of the most diverse in history.
That means that the religious problem that is at the root of the conflict is more to blame on the deeply religious element... Which is not Israel.
> It's highly religious matter and as you probably know the area surrounding Jerusalem is the holy land site for the three world's major religions namely Jewish, Christian and Islam, and the Jerusalem is mentioned specifically inside the Old Testament, New Testament and Quran, all originally in Semite based languages.
Are you seriously mansplaining my home country and its history to me?
> The term Israel was used in the Quran more than thousands it's being adopted by current Israel govt.
It's from the old testament, sons of Israel. I read the books.
> So you're saying that there are motivations that would make you perform suicide bombings? There are incentives by which you would sacrifice your children? <...> If you think that the death of your child will send him on a fast track to heaven that can seriously impact the rational choices you make down the line.
If your people were under threat, would you sacrifice yourself to save them? If your children died fighting to protect your country (genuinely protect, not in the "US invades Iraq to protect our god-given right to drive giant trucks" sense), would you be proud of them? Do you think they'd go to heaven?
This is why I keep pressing on this: under what circumstances would you do the same things that they're doing? Start from the premise that you did, and work backwards - what would it take? Why would you do that? If you continue to act like these people are weird alterna-humans, you're going to keep getting surprised by their actions. Start from the premise that they're like you or broadly like the people you know, work your way back to why the hell they're doing the things that keep surprising you, and then figure out what's going to make them stop.
(As a separate note, the concept of martyrdom doesn't start in Islam - there's a rich history of it across all the Abrahamic religions, and all of them presume the martyr's getting the fast track to paradise.)
I'd say one other thing, which is that Hamas is a militant group which considers themselves under existential siege and behaves accordingly - Iran is a different entity under different constraints whose people (and leaders) make different choices. Words are words - I'd suspect we've both heard plenty of revolting things from our countrymen that we brush off as idle talk that the other side would take as a dire threat.
And, for what it's worth, I understand the paranoia. I don't think it's unjustified. I get why Israel does not want Iran to get a nuclear bomb. But I don't think the actions of Israel or the US here are making that outcome less likely, and I think they're taking those actions due to the kind of misreading of Iran that we're discussing here.
To flip this on its head: if you were Iran, what on earth would convince you not to build a bomb now?
Thanks and appreciated.
> my genuine hope is that people everywhere can live in peace and safety.
Same. Unfortunately, bad people do exist and pacifism is a luxury we can't afford.
> unless you've got Bibi's private number, in which case - get dialing, damn
We demonstrate a lot. Some in-front of his house. He's an a*hole megalomaniac that just doesn't care about anything. But I guess you have your own version of that...
> If your people were under threat, would you sacrifice yourself to save them?
Self sacrifice is very different to walking into a bus in the middle of Tel Aviv where you have children and other Muslims and blowing yourself up. Notice that people did it during the Oslo accord period, not for the purpose of "protecting their family". They did it to stop the peace process from happening and were successful.
The goal of Hamas is the exact opposite of what you describe. Their goal is to prevent peace with Israel. Oct 7th happened because they were afraid Israel would make a deal with Saudi Arabia which would lead to a Palestinian state. They don't want that, they want the whole country.
I'll also say that if I say things like "Israel does X" or something, I'm not ascribing the actions or morals of the state to you personally - I live in America, I know the difference between the actions of a government and the opinions of its people (unless you've got Bibi's private number, in which case - get dialing, damn).
> Do you think they'd go to heaven?
They believe that if a Palestinian child dies during the conflict they go to heaven. That essentially gives them a license to "sacrifice" children of other Palestinians as part of their holy war.
> This is why I keep pressing on this: under what circumstances would you do the same things that they're doing?
No. I'd compromise and build a country. That is what the majority of Palestinians want. That is why the Palestinian authority never joined Hamas's war against Israel.
> (As a separate note, the concept of martyrdom doesn't start in Islam - there's a rich history of it across all the Abrahamic religions, and all of them presume the martyr's getting the fast track to paradise.)
Sure. It's in the old testament I know. תמות נפשי עם פלישתים Roughly translated: "My sole will die with the philistines" which is fitting. But we grew up as did the Christians who were also pretty crazy. The same is true for most Muslims, as I said... My kids study in school with Muslims. They are fine people. Hamas is a different breed.
> I'd say one other thing, which is that Hamas is a militant group which considers themselves under existential siege and behaves accordingly
That isn't true. They had the freedom to do whatever they wanted and made an explicit choice. Israel literally paid them billions in a failed attempt to make them more moderate.
They continue to make that choice by refusing the release of the 53 Israeli hostages which would end the war.
Indeed we do :-)
> That is why the Palestinian authority never joined Hamas's war against Israel.
The PA's reward for this is the settlers.
I think a basic problem for Israel here is that some relatively small percent of the population wants genocide, and they're the ones who've been driving the cart for the last decade or so.
What, to you, is the realistic road to a two-state solution?
With regards to the hostages - to an outside eye, Israel's bombing campaign doesn't really seem to indicate they're overly worried about the health and safety of those 53 remaining hostages.
Yes. That should be the real outrage here.
The extreme-right fascists in the government are indeed using Oct 7th as an excuse to make the west-bank worse. I hope we can kick them out of office in the next election but the Iran thing shuffles the deck a bit and reduced some of the hate against Bibi.
> I think a basic problem for Israel here is that some relatively small percent of the population wants genocide, and they're the ones who've been driving the cart for the last decade or so.
I don't think they want Genocide. They look at the Palestinian extremists and say that they will never change. No matter what we try they will always try to kill us. So if it's us or them it should be us.
I get what they are saying. The fact that Palestinians voted for Hamas shocked us all back in the day. The problem is that Palestinians don't have stable leadership that we can talk to and trust. We also have pretty poor leaders since Rabin.
> What, to you, is the realistic road to a two-state solution?
I used to think there is no other option. That we might take a detour and get there eventually after all the pain since there's no other realistic option. Now I'm afraid that the Israeli extreme right might rise to power. The anti-Israel sentiment is actually fueling it which is pretty horrifying.
I hope calm voices will take the Saudi deal which can truly revolutionize the middle east. But right now I think we need to calm down. We've been in nonstop war since 2023 and it puts you in a fight or flight mode. People are picking up extreme stances as a result.
> With regards to the hostages - to an outside eye, Israel's bombing campaign doesn't really seem to indicate they're overly worried about the health and safety of those 53 remaining hostages.
Bibi doesn't want them back and Hamas don't want to release them. He knows that if they will be back he will have to end the war and then might lose his government. Now with the Iran campaign it might finally give him the incentive to close on a reasonable deal.
This is a bit of semantics, though - "if it's us or them it should be us" is advocating genocide (I'm not saying _you're_ advocating genocide, to be clear). I think this is one of the problems for Israeli society, especially post-Oct 7 - the only group with a coherent picture of what they want and how to get there is the extreme right, and they're pushing for genocide, no matter how they phrase or qualify it. The semantics and the nuance of the conversation inside Israeli society isn't making it to the outside world, but the actions of the right wing hardliners are - that's what the rest of the world is seeing and responding to (and, for what it's worth, I'd suspect there's similar conversations happening inside of Palestine, too).
> The fact that Palestinians voted for Hamas shocked us all back in the day.
There's a couple sides to this - one was that Fatah was viewed as broadly corrupt and ineffective, and Hamas was the opposition party. I understand why Israel saw that as a Palestinian vote for Israeli genocide, but there's a credible claim that it was closer to, say, a Turkish vote for Erdogan or an Indian vote for Modi.
The history of the Hamas government, especially in the early days, is an interesting one - the group made real signs that they were willing to de-escalate and move towards peace. There's a long history of the moment here: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/cobban-breakout-hamas-... - but long story short, neither Israel nor America were willing to take a chance, and, again, right-wingers in Israel took actions that closed that road off.
> The problem is that Palestinians don't have stable leadership that we can talk to and trust.
Yeah, this is definitely a credible complaint from the Israeli side - probably the last person who could've conceivably been that person was Yasser Arafat, and even the people who worked closely to negotiate with him noted that he was a militant to his dying days (which were 20 years ago).
Regarding the road to peace, I think this is something that Israel needs to invest in if there's hope of a genuine two-state solution - there needs to be efforts to build up Palestinian civil society and they need to show there's a credible reason for negotiating with Israel and genuine benefits to come from it, which I don't think Palestinians broadly believe right now.
> I hope calm voices will take the Saudi deal which can truly revolutionize the middle east. But right now I think we need to calm down. We've been in nonstop war since 2023 and it puts you in a fight or flight mode. People are picking up extreme stances as a result.
Yeah, this is going to be really hard to unwind - especially since I don't know what kind of committed partner for peace you're going to have on the other side of the Gaza wall going forward. The amount of despair visited on those people isn't creating fertile ground for the thawing of relations for the next generation or so.
Netanyahu has carved his name into the history of Israel at this point - I sincerely hope y'all can find a way forward towards peace.
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
Fair. Let's give context to "Death to America":
1983 Beirut Barracks Bombing
1984–1985 Lebanon Kidnappings
1996 Khobar Towers Bombing
Iraq War Era IED Campaign (2003–2011)
2011 Attempted Assassination of Saudi Ambassador in Washington, D.C.
2019–2020 Attacks on U.S. Forces and Embassy in Iraq
Iranian Missile Strikes on U.S. Forces in Iraq (2020)
Here I'm ignoring most proxy action and ignoring the many attacks that targeted Israel.
I 100% agree context is important.
Ansar Allah has managed to largely shut down the port of Eilat, one of only 3 major ports in Israel, and Israel relies on maritime imports to sustain itself.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240716-israel-says-eilat...
They aren't detered by Israeli bombs because they've been bombed by the Saudis for over a decade in their ongoing civil war.
But all of this talk about nuclear bombs and jihad is hypothetical. Meanwhile only one country in the MidEast has an ACTUAL undeclared nuclear arsenal, and it's the country that has occupied territory in multiple neighboring countries while conducting an ethnic cleansing that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of women and children.
As a Westerner, I'd much rather we deal with the Rogue State perpetrators of actual crimes rather than the hypothetical criminals.
That was mostly due to the blockade, it doesn't justify the rockets. That mostly damages a private company and doesn't cost Israel much in the grand scheme of things considering Israel has 2 additional large ports.
> They aren't detered by Israeli bombs because they've been bombed by the Saudis for over a decade in their ongoing civil war.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Death of their own people doesn't fit into their equation.
> But all of this talk about nuclear bombs and jihad is hypothetical. Meanwhile only one country in the MidEast has an ACTUAL undeclared nuclear arsenal, and it's the country that has occupied territory in multiple neighboring countries while conducting an ethnic cleansing that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of women and children.
That mixes a lot of different things and is mostly false.
Unlike them Israel never called for an annihilation of a different state. It called for a regime change. It never made a threat related to nukes other than one idiotic member of parliament who said something stupid.
Israeli demonstrators never called for death to Iran and even now the targets in Iran focus on the people/infrastructure behind the nuclear program while Iran targeted many civilian areas.
The claim of ethnic cleansing is also false and shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation in Gaza. There are Israelis who are justifiably warning that Israel is headed in that direction, but it physically hasn't happened yet. There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll.
If you're such a believer in Islamic logic then please explain why Hamas is still holding 53 Israeli hostages?
That is Israels main excuse for the war, without them the war will be over. What is the logic behind that?
Hamas sees Israel as a western nation. It believes that without western support Israel will collapse. In that sense the western outrage over the violence in Gaza is fuel to Hamas, it gives them incentive to keep the violence going and encourages them to use children. It encourages them to hoard the aid sent by the west and produce a picture of starvation amongst their own people.
The Israeli right-wing also benefits from this. They know that if the west abandons support for Israel it will allow them to do whatever they want. They believe that no amount of compromise will ever satisfy Palestinian extremists and they encourage taking harder action against them to fuel a war.
These sorts of stances and misinformation in the west is contributing to more violence and Palestinian death.
Oh wow. A floor of 50,000 dead, every city razed, barely any functioning infrastructure and a blockage on medical and food assistance.
Israel chooses this.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/05/far-past-time-to...
Or archived link: https://archive.is/D85m0
Israel didn't start this war. Hamas started it and is keeping it going by refusing to release the 53 civilian hostages it is holding. They are hiding under the cities, under the hospitals and all over the region.
I think the Israeli right-wing took that Hamas bait and used that to commit far more violence than it should have. Hamas is using it to prop western outrage which it believes will bring down Israel. The Israeli right-wing is happy about western outrage because they believe it will force Israel into isolation and let them do whatever they want.
Ansar Allah suppresses the port of Eilat while Iran suppresses the port of Haifa ( https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/shipping-company-m... ). I don't think Israel can be adequately supplied by the throughput of Ashdod alone.
> That mixes a lot of different things and is mostly false.
No, it is NOT "mostly false".
Does Israel have an undeclared nuclear arsenal? YES.
Does Israel occupy territory in multiple neighboring countries? YES (in both Syria and Lebanon, see: https://www.972mag.com/southern-syria-new-israeli-occupation... and https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-will-leave-...)
Is Israel conducting an ethnic cleansing? See my clarification below, but also YES.
>The claim of ethnic cleansing is also false and shows a deep misunderstanding of the situation in Gaza.
Well if we want to get technical, Israel is conducting a genocide, as ethnic cleansing is not precisely defined. Any rational human being can pull up the definition of genocide on the UN website and conclude for themselves by assessing each criteria, particularly #1 and #3. It's not complicated. https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
We see the stream of images of dead, maimed, and starving children. We have the first-hand accounts of western aid workers and doctors trying to save lives in Gaza, reporting anomalies that even veteran conflict doctors haven't seen before (such as disproportionate head and torso small arms wounds on children). And perhaps more importantly, we see and hear the things Israeli politicians say about Palestinians.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/senior-israeli-official-s...
Should we not take a member of the Knesset at his word? https://kol-barama.co.il/item/%D7%97%D7%9B-%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%A...
Should we not take Israeli Cabinet Ministers at their word, for establishing intent to destroy these people? https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-says-gaza-to-be-total...
and such language is not a new development, here's the Defense Minister back in 2018: https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/there-are-no-inn...
> There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll.
Why are you using passive language? Why are there civilian casualties? They don't just magically appear on their own. There would be no civilian casualties if Israel wasn't dropping bombs on peoples' homes. There would be no civilian casualties if the IDF wasn't ambushing convoys of first responders.
> If you're such a believer in Islamic logic then please explain why Hamas is still holding 53 Israeli hostages?
I will not allow you to deflect from the core issue at hand by pivoting the conversation to Hamas. The point is to compare and assess the two principle STATE ACTORS, one of which sits on a nuclear arsenal while massacring civilians, and one of which is on the receiving end of "preemptive strikes" while not possessing equivalent weapons.
> Hamas sees Israel as a western nation. It believes that without western support Israel will collapse.
Hamas isn't wrong, which is probably why Israel spends such a massive amount of treasure and effort on propaganda directed at western audiences. The Israeli air force would have been grounded months ago if not for a blank check to get fuel and ordnance from the US. Israel's jets drink more aviation fuel than Israel can ever refine itself.
> It encourages them to hoard the aid sent by the west and produce a picture of starvation amongst their own people.
Hamas aren't the ones intercepting aid shipments in international waters. Israel is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_flotilla_raid
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/02/europe/gaza-flotilla-ship...
Well... It isn't. It's a big port. We're doing perfectly fine and the shops are full.
> Does Israel have an undeclared nuclear arsenal? YES.
Probably. But assuming it does, did it ever threaten anyone with it even when it was under attack? Nope.
> Does Israel occupy territory in multiple neighboring countries? YES (in both Syria and Lebanon
Lebanon shot rockets into Israel for a year at an average of 10 rockets per day targeting civilian population killing children etc. They dug huge tunnels in an attempt to do a full out invasion/massacre on the north border. Israel responded "gently" at first. Gave them a year to back down.
Now there's a price to pay after that.
In Syria Israel is being cautious. Just like Turkey is being cautious. It's an unstable region. Furthermore, the Druzi population in Syria is under threat: https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2025/05/03/syria-c...
Israel is there to protect the family members of Israeli Druzi minorities and make sure they aren't murdered by the new regime.
> Well if we want to get technical, Israel is conducting a genocide, as ethnic cleansing is not precisely defined.
> 1. Killing members of the group; - Israel doesn't satisfy that criteria. There is a war which Israel didn't start. It's targeting Hamas which is in a specific region still holding hostages. People don't die because they are Palestinians.
Yes, civilian casualties happen a lot and it's tragic. But that isn't genocide by even the most lax definition of that.
> 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Again, war isn't that.
But let me help you with the arguments. First there's the ethnic cleansing which essentially means displacement. Initially when Palestinians were cleared from the north there were fears that they won't be able to return home. Some right-wing extremists even advocated for that. However, they have since returned.
The second claim is about starvation which I agree is terrible. Unfortunately, it's not as clear cut. Israel did plenty of stupid/evil stuff in that regard (cutting water, electricity and holding aid trucks). These were indeed bad. But they got restored.
The logic they had was that this is stolen by Hamas and then resold on the black market to fund their operation. This is also 100% true. That's why Israel is trying a different way around Hamas to bring down the organization for good.
That's horrible, but so are the other guys.
> > There are many civilian casualties and that is indeed horrible and tragic, but blaming Israel for it is contributing to the death toll. > > Why are you using passive language?
Because I never killed anyone and always voted for peace. I didn't do this, Hamas did it. I feel terrible for Palestinians. I can (and do) demonstrate against my government, I hope they will get a deal to release the hostages and end this.
A Palestinian who tries to do the same thing in Gaza will find himself in a shallow grave and the people who will put him there are his own countrymen.
Ideally, if Israel had a decent government this war should have been about freeing Palestinians from the clutches of Hamas. But with the current government it's unfortunately just terrible.
> Why are there civilian casualties?
There always are in war.
But mostly because of you. Hamas believe that without western support Israel will collapse. So they are making the war as brutal as possible for their own populace in the hope of de-legitimizing Israel. The Israeli extreme right-wing is actually for it, they think that if western support is no longer an option then no one will hold them back from forcing Palestinians out of Gaza entirely.
> They don't just magically appear on their own.
In a war zone people don't carry flashy signs indicating their civilian status.
> There would be no civilian casualties if Israel wasn't dropping bombs on peoples' homes.
Maybe. But there would be a lot more if Israel wouldn't just call them up and tell them to leave https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67327079
> There would be no civilian casualties if the IDF wasn't ambushing convoys of first responders.
There were several cases of Hamas using Ambulances to drive around and move troops. There were cases of mistaken identity by the IDF. It's horrible and that's exactly what Hamas wants.
> I will not allow you to deflect from the core issue at hand by pivoting the conversation to Hamas.
Why is that deflection?
You're pretending that Israel is there shooting civilians while ignoring the reason it's there to begin with.
> The point is to compare and assess the two principle STATE ACTORS, one of which sits on a nuclear arsenal while massacring civilians,
Again. Not murdering civilians, you have no concept of what war is.
> and one of which is on the receiving end of "preemptive strikes" while not possessing equivalent weapons.
They didn't receive a "preemptive strikes". They were the people behind the rise of Hezbolla in Lebanon who attacked Israel repeatedly. They funded the Huttis who attacked the Saudis and shipping. They blew up embassies and were behind countless terrorist action. They are the trigger, training and a major driver for the October 7th attacks.
Once they gain nuclear weapons it would be too late and WWIII will start. This strike was essential to prevent that.
> > Hamas sees Israel as a western nation. It believes that without western support Israel will collapse. > > Hamas isn't wrong, which is probably why Israel spends such a massive amount of treasure and effort on propaganda directed at western audiences.
Israel is one of the worlds largest manufacturers of weapons. Why?
Because we were under embargo before and it helped us build up our economy and technology. When we first got American aircrafts we had to strip that junk down and rebuild it. Thanks to us Americas aircrafts are now far better. Missile defense systems actually work.
An embargo will hurt Israel a lot. But would probably be far worse to the Palestinians.
> The Israeli air force would have been grounded months ago if not for a blank check to get fuel and ordnance from the US. Israel's jets drink more aviation fuel than Israel can ever refine itself.
If Israel can fly fewer missions it would just have to make every bombing count.
> Hamas aren't the ones intercepting aid shipments in international waters. Israel is.
The amount of aid in these flotillas is minuscule. They are for show only. Aid comes through trucks. Gaza has no port large enough for a ship, Biden tried to build one and failed.
These flotillas try to present the Israeli blockade as illegal. It isn't. Hamas is a threat and blockades are legal. Starvation tactics are illegal, but whether Israel is at fault here is debatable.
The problem I have with people like yourself is that you have a lot of criticism but no actual solutions. It's really easy to blame Israel, but what would you have Israel do exactly?
Go nicely and ask Hamas kindly to return the hostages? Stop firing rockets?
You say don't kill civilians, which school of urban warfare did you study in?
Give Palestinians a state: Israel tried it twice, arguably three times (leaving Gaza).
Leave Gaza: tried that before. That's how we got here.
It's a bit like saying "but Y2K never happened, they must have been exaggerating" or "but nobody talks about the Ozone hole or acid rain anymore so it must have never been a real problem".
"That was Hezbollah, not us!"
You might say using a proxy would be a hopelessly transparent ploy, but Hezbollah has been firing other Iranian supplied weapons at Israel for years and yet many people swear up and down that Iran has "never attacked Israel". So apparently the proxy ploy does work on a lot of people.
One of Iran's strengths, for example, has always been lots of cheap missiles. People often point out how few of the missiles actually hit their targets in Israel, but that's missing the point: every intercepted missile costs orders of magnitude more to intercept than it does to create and launch. The Iron Dome is very effective, but is both incredibly expensive to run and, most importantly, loses efficacy over time as it's resources are depleted.
Nobody knows exactly how close Iran is to a nuclear weapon, but most analysts that I've read that the time to actually being able to launch a weapon is in terms of weeks. So part of Iran's strategy will always been draw attacks until it is ready to potentially retaliate.
On top of that, this is not a video game. Iran does not want to use a nuclear missile, nobody really does since it like ends, at least regionally, in everyone losing. Part of the balance of the conflict in the middle East in Iran is precisely not putting them in a potion where the use of nuclear weapons suddenly becomes rational. This is exactly why we in America have been nervous about open aggression towards Iran. Not because we might not win, but because it backs them into a corner where nuclear options suddenly become more rational.
> Because it is not liked the Iranian regime does not have any political options either.
Just one tiny example of how this is false: because of US sanctions China gets a enormous (estimated at around 15%) amount of their oil, very cheaply, from Iran. A serious threat to Iran then becomes a serious threat to Chinese oil supplies.
The issue is extremely complicated and nuanced, so any takes that are binary are missing a lot of information. By striking Iran we are pushing this this issue into places we haven't really explored yet, with consequences nobody truly knows.
One of the main reasons for the Israeli attack was the mounting stockpile of missiles. Even the small fraction of conventional missiles that hit Israel created a great deal of damage. They were on route to create enough missiles and launchpads that would make Israels air defense irrelevant. The equivalent of two nuclear bombs.
One country already did.
Do you think sitting by and doing nothing will not pose an existential threat to the government by way of constituent discontent?
Also if they "were just about to have the bomb" then they could develop it and use it after. So there is the conflicting position that they are both insane to use it and but both sane to not escalate the conflict. This is where most pro-war arguments fail the basic logic test in the nuclear bomb era.
that's a fancy retelling of history you got there. MILLIONs died in those wars and less than 100K US troops died. Out of those wars, iraq 1 led to iraq defeat and withdrawal from kuwait. iraq 2 had saddam dragged through the streets and a regime change within 3 weeks, yemen was counterterrorism - there's no regime to topple, in afghanistan the taliban regime was removed for 20 years and only once the troops were withdrawn were they able to crawl back.
the current Iranian regime is over.
One of the key reasons behind why Iraq fell so quickly is that Saddam made all the wrong moves leading up the invasion.
By that point, he had alienated every single potential ally (including Iran) - and virtually all states in the region were supportive of the invasion, regardless of their positions in public.
Not to mention that the invasion of Iraq was ultimately a failure anyways..
It's so funny that you can't see the parallels
Unfortunately, international law means nothing these days, so it might have been a mistake to not establish deterrence sooner.
Regardless, Iran is not going to be as easy to topple as some people might think.
Come back to reality friend, nobody is alienated.
Is this supposed to make me feel comfortable about Iran acquiring nuclear weapons?
Say, have you ever wondered how exactly Iran came to hate America so much?
Referring to Congress as AIPAC slaves is textbook anti-Semitic rhetoric; it relies on the old conspiracy theory that Jews secretly control governments. Smuggling in bigotry like this undermines any chance at actual discussion we might have.
Nobody is falling for this thought-ending rhetorical black hole trap anymore. Stop projecting your antisementism onto others. It's embarrassing.
I expect (ok, I WORRY) a major US city to have a nuke set off in it by Iran within the next 5 years.
It didn't have to be this way, we had a working treaty and inspections regime until Trump pulled us out of it.
Decades of effort to prohibit nuclear proliferation have just gone down the toilet.
EDIT: Ya'll are right, the idea of them doing a test and going public makes a lot more sense.
This absolutely will not happen. Iran will make a nuke, and they will test it very publicly, and then the political math in the Middle East changes overnight. The point of a nuclear bomb for a country like Iran (or Pakistan, or North Korea) is deterrence, not attack - if Iran set off a nuke in an American city, the regime would not survive, and it’s possible the country would not.
Edit: to put that differently, the only way an Iranian bomb goes off in an American city is if an American bomb goes off in an Iranian city.
I hope this is true, but Iran has a hard time convincing people because their theocratic elements are suicidal from a secular standpoint. Eg their religious messaging is confounding.
If Iran is going to behave logically with a nuke, then why is it so terrible for them to have one? If they are illogical, then why would they NOT choose to wipe out Israel and blow up a couple major US cities?
The arguments I hear about Iran are almost completely contradictory.
While Pakistan is Muslim they are not the same as Iran in any way. The current rulers of Iran do not operate by western logic and would be consider a "holy death" as a direct path to heaven.
Iranian populace isn't behind that, the people themselves are reasonably secular and aren't behind that. However, the leadership is dangerous and you should not assume they would use western logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei%27s_fatwa_against...
I don't expect Iran to use any nukes that they develop though. Having nukes puts a country in a special diplomatic class. Using them is almost never beneficial. The status quo risks for nuclear programs is stronger sovereignty, which would drastically shift the regional balance of power and possibly tip the scales on a broad international level.
"As a Christian growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, ‘Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.’ And from my perspective, I’d rather be on the blessing side of things.”
- Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator
"There is a reason the first time I shook Netanyahu's hand, I didn't wash it until I could touch the heads of my children."
- Randy Fine, a U.S. congressman
And of course, there's the President of the United States who's known to be completely rational.
They may be religious fanatics, but they’re not idiots.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/irans-foreign-minister-says-no-10...
"You made a deal that disadvantages us so we're going to rape and murder a bunch of teenagers and kidnap people."
Nukes among peers aren't there to be used. They are there to immobilize and freeze a layer of conflict.
Why would Iran do something so suicidal?
It's strange how this "Sum of All Fears" scenario is dismissed out of hand, or doesn't even occur, to the tankie-types on HN and reddit rooting for the Ayatollah to cross the nuclear finish line--the same Supreme Leader who, three days ago, permitted large protests in Tehran where crowds chanted "Death to America" and burned US flags.
Even weirder is that many (most?) of them are urban types who live, or aspire to live, in big cities like NYC or LA so they can enjoy the large LGBTQ communities, the ethnic restaurants, the bars serving craft IPAs, and the reduced commute times to and from protests. Hasan Piker, a prominent tankiefluencer, lives in LA, for example. So you would think they especially would have misgivings about Iran's enrichment program, even if they don't support intervention against it. And yet most of them dismiss any concern over it, or even outright state Iran should have nuclear weapons.
local terror attacks are already a constant and accepted danger
Simply declare a prior good state to be "the mean," then all we need to do is let mean reversion work its magic!
Wouldn't Russia or Venezuela take up the slack.
But democracies these days can't help but tie themselves in knots, so not holding my breath.
Yours is an interesting conspiracy theory, though. Most people would say that this war is obviously about Israel.
Bloodlust is one thing, but the dehumanization is just far worse. Maybe they go hand in hand - you can't want to see someone die unless you think of them as inhuman.
There's something about social media where it has been amplifying this dehumanization as well. So another layer of sadness where it feels like we could have, should have prevented this. Like an asteroid strike or a global pandemic, it feels like one of those things that should never happen until it does. I remember looking at 80000hours and thinking, nah... nuclear warfare will never happen, let's focus on AI.
They aren't. In the sense that, while a lot of Iranians are exasperated with their clerical elite under normal conditions and abscence of external threats, even domestic regime opponents tend to be very allergic to having their sovereignty destroyed by the US. Iraq should have been a lesson in that regard ("they'll greet us as liberators"), apparently it was not.
The same people would have drooled over the engineering of concentration camps. "Yeah it's sad there's some human casualties, but you have to appreciate the thought that went into it, and imagine doing that at that scale!"
They cower behind their the comfort of their home, AC, keyboards, western paycheck and standards of living while trying to be (seen) as "rational" and "stoic".
They talk like there is good sides and bad sides in war, right sides and wrong sides.
Most of them are these small powerless men who dream of power fantasy.
I wonder, will today's children who is seeing this spectacles of war in 4K, all gore and guts and destruction, will grow up to be better leaders for all?
Or are they going to grow up just like their parents, small powerless trigger-happy men filled with mid-life crisis.
Does that invalidate the fact that drunk driving leads to more road deaths?
There is a lot to be said about the practice of overusing the GDP metric, but in this case reminding everyone that the burden of proof is on you should be enough.
I don’t appreciate your analogy, and it strikes me as false.
If (if) this destroyed a nuclear weapons program, that is good for the world.
No one can predict the downstream consequences of today, but I fail to see an argument for why the world benefits from another nation getting the bomb.
I think the attacks aren't just about a nuclear weapons program. First, the program, according to US intelligence, does not exist. I'm inclined to believe them. [1] Second, unrelated infrastructure has been attacked, including energy infrastructure, hospitals, and state media.
All of that points not to the destruction of a nuclear weapons program, but of a country. The Israeli government claims to want regime change now... but that claim only came some time after the attacks started and there's no reason in that case to bomb hospitals. The Israeli government claimed the hospitals were "hiding" missle sites, but haven't presented any evidence of that, and have used that excuse many times before now, and were clearly lying.
Ah, plus the countries involved are engaged in a separate act of bloodlust at the moment. Which doesn't directly mean that the attacks against Iran are the same, but it certainly colors the picture.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/gabbard-trump-intelligence-iran-n...
I find it fairly suspicious to hear "Iran doesn't have a nuke program. Yes, they're enriching uranium to a point where it's only use is a nuclear weapon, but they have no plans to build a nuclear weapon"
With less snark, this will only end peacefully as soon as possible with some diplomacy, or in a massive humanitarian disaster.
Put simply: they have it.
One of the unfair truths of nuclear geopolitics is the power asymmetry between nuclear and non-nuclear states. (And the collective interest of the former in nuclear NIMBYism.)
Jewish lives are not worth more than other peoples.
All these events risk spiraling the whole region into chaos, and creating another ISIS-like militancy, the brutality of which is going to be felt by the Iranians first and foremost.
You can easily find stuff in the Bible and the Torah or Talmud that would shock you. And Israel even acts on the latter. But conveniently it's just the Muslim world, one beset with colonial extraction for centuries, that you care about. Not the people in the US who supported wars killings hundreds of thousands over the last few decades for religious reasons. Hmm.
Surely you mean on the side of extractors? The Ottoman Empire practiced mass movement of people (sürgün), basically settler colonialism; earlier Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates are among the largest empires in history, and their population was mass converted to Islam.
"We"? As far as I know US is not part of that region. Also I remember current president was campaigning on not starting wars. And yet here we are.
So I guess we're on the same anti-war side, but for opposite reasons?
Iran has killed a lot less civilians than Israel and it isn't even close. I'm much less worried about them getting the bomb than I am about the fact Israel already has it.
Isn't an act of congress required for this, in the US?
_We_ do special operations, interventions, liberations, preventive strikes, weapon destructions.
Today Congressmen's main job is soliciting bribes. I expect they want their name on as few pieces of paper connecting them to a conflict as possible. They are not in charge of the government.
Interesting. Bombing Muslim-majority countries seems to be accepted exception?
By anyone. The world over.
If you're seriously saying this isn't war, bombing Iran, you're just engaging in willfull self deception at this point.
Use of military force requires congressional approval.
Well, in principle. In practice, the US executive does not observe this restriction, or at most - makes a flimsy connection the 2001 AUMF following the twin towers attack. The courts do not enjoin it from using military force pretty much arbitraly; and congress does not impeach nor even adopt declarative denunciations of this behavior.
If this isn’t an act of war then nothing is. And that’s a terrifying thought because that means a single person can start a war without congressional approval. Even impeachment doesn’t help prevent war since it’s after the fact.
What happens if a president orders strikes on a friendly country? It could be due to dementia, narcissistic personality disorder, personal vendettas (hypothetically, in real life I trust the US wouldnt elect that kind of person).
Hence highlighting the completely schizofrenic bind this position entails.
Because no one would consider a nuke anything other than a war, and the same applies to these planes dropping these bombs.
Yes, but when only when you really need to go to a full wartime economy. Otherwise is just business as usual.
In fact, it may never have actually existed.
The War Powers Act of 1973 was approved literally to avoid it happening in the future.
Iran knew USA would come along one day, and they knew the max capability of the bombs they would drop.
So why did they not go a lot deeper/reinforce to a level where the b52 payloads cannot reach.
While they could've said "let's just assume there will be something X times stronger than anything known", it would also have increase the price to build these facilities by a factor of X+Y.
I'm no expert, but I imagine once you have your centrifuges up and running, you don't want to continue setting of blasts nearby to add another sub-level to your plant.
If true they failed to destroy the material (just like last time when the US brought chaos over the world by creating a war out of "they have bombs" lies)
If not true, did they actually try to make the world a more poisonous place?
Not true. Caverns can collapse without leaking enough into atmosphere to trigger detection. The simple answer is we don’t really know; we may not be able to know.
With a kinetic energy impacted like the MOP bunker buster, does the material vaporize ahead of the munitions? Is the destructive shockwave the munition casing itself, or perhaps the vaporized breccia being pushed in front of it?
In some ways I imagine it like a nail being driven into the ground but my gut feeling is that, at such high impact energies, something more complicated is going on. For example, with small calibre ballistics you can have many kinds of terminal action: from square edged paper cutting rounds used to make clean holes in targets, to subsonic rounds transferring energy into a target, all the way up to supersonic rounds which drive a shock cone through a “soft” target to cause trauma.
https://x.com/iaeaorg/status/1936650574939685121
So us has been funding the death of iran 40 years ago, and iran has no right to say anything about it? This is far more than supporting terrorism. This is supporting your neighboring country to attack you.
Rest of your arguments are irrelavant. Biggest ally of us is saudis, and they are doing pretty much everything iran does, in a highly totaliter regime. They kill opponent, hang homosexuals, have a supreme regime, yet us loves them.
I am just saying, there is bit of an inconsistency here.
Trying to moralize actions that are simply in the strategic interest of the US and our allies will lead you nowhere. Ukraine could have a king and stoned the gays and we still would have backed them against Russia.
And it's quite amusing what you just confirmed with your own words what Russia isn't a genocidal fanatical society hellbent on eradicating everything they don't like.
Above-ground facilities containing highly radioactive actinide products, supplying power to nearby civilization, cooled using nearby waterways
> us can in iran
Deep underground enrichment facilities containing weakly radioactive uranium, hours away from population centers
b) Active reactors contain very "hot" decay products that are very bad for your health if atomised by an explosion and spread around. Chernobyl is the prototypical example of this. Enriched Uranium is less radioactive than natural Uranium, that's the point! Natural Uranium would "trigger itself" prematurely due to its constant background decay radiation.
So, attacking a nuclear facility is valid if they are not that radioactive (since you are attacking you are not planning to use it anyway)
Did I get your answer correctly ?
Right now? Not that we know of.
Historically? Yes.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/meet-oklo-the-earths-tw...
[citation needed]
https://www.tasnimnews.com/en/news/2025/05/25/3320800/freigh...
It will require absurd number of trains that will run empty 1/2 of the time (unless you'll find a way to pack "Chinese goods" into tank cars)
Israel has nukes too so as soon Iran bombs Israel they strike back, not to mention the US reaction.
MAD would lead to a stalemate
Don't confuse religious rhetoric with actual state behavior.
In Iran’s case the highest religious authority has repeatedly issued a fatwa declaring the use of nuclear weapons forbidden.
Pakistan’s army motto invokes jihad, yet it has treated its arsenal as a shield against invasion so far, not a ticket to paradise.
Israel’s so-called Samson Option evokes a biblical suicide attack, but I doubt they'll use nukes for anything but deterrent.
North Korean propaganda urges citizens to die for the Leader, and I'm sure there are other nations I've not listed who's dominant religions have some sort of martyrdom idea, which use nukes as deterrents.
Look at political interests, command structures, and the costs of escalation, not whether a nation honors death in battle (which one doesn't?)
Europe is going to have to pick up the tab for the inevitable refugee and migrant crisis that will result from a wider war in the region - which they won’t be able to afford thanks to Trumps 5% military spending demand.
Imagine what it means for Europe if a fraction of 90 million people (5 times larger than Syria) suddenly find themselves in a situation that would necessitate fleeing for survival.
The elite nuclear club, forged in fire and sealed with hypocrisy, has made its position unmistakably clear: if you're not already in, you're never getting in. The path to national security does not run through treaties or IAEA inspections — it runs through enrichment, warheads, and the credible threat of annihilation. The lesson from history is as brutal as it is consistent: Those who gave up their deterrents — Saddam, Gaddafi, Ukraine — earned their place not at the table, but under the table.-
Non-proliferation, once wrapped in the language of peace and stability, now reads more like a cartel agreement. An exclusive arrangement to ensure the existing shareholders retain total dominance over the levers of this existential power. Meanwhile, aspiring states are lectured on restraint while having their infrastructure surgically removed via high explosives, or worse, sanctioned into collapse.-
It’s not deterrence anymore. It’s deterrence for some. The rest? They’re told to disarm and die quietly. Welcome to the age of managed apocalypse — where those with the bomb hold the moral high ground by sheer altitude, and everyone else is collateral in the performance of global order.-
plus they can actually make bombs even with 60% heu, they just have to be fatter and use more energetic explosives.
the time to have bombed Iran's nuclear program would have been months ago. or to have, you know, kept the original nuclear deal.
I hope if this does happen in Iran, the day after involves a movement towards a secular and free government. But I have my doubts, especially considering a government led by a dictator tends to be easier to control, so external powers may lean towards that option if given the choice.
I'm fairly against this and most of my friends where I live think I’m with the Mullahs. It’s not a questions of who’s bad or good. It all comes down to the fact that a foreign government and military attacked our LAND.
History repeats itself and shows patterns. Look at the patterns. Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many then thought USA will bring democracy and freedom and economic benefits and relief. But what ended up happening is hundreds of thousands of innocents died, millions were displaced, and all the infrastructure was bombed and those countries were set back 50 years. And all western oil companies took over the oil fields of that country.
Netanyahu and the Zionists have been saying Iran is a couple months away from a nuclear weapon for 25 years now. All lies. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. While Israel illegally has nuclear weapons themselves and don’t disclose their nuclear program or allow inspections. Iran signed the non proliferation treaty and Israel to this day has not signed it. Even all western experts and analysts say they Iran does not have nuclear weapons or a plan to build one. Tulsi Gabbard, the US national security advisor said a couple months ago that Iran has no nuclear weapons or plans to make a weapon.
They attacked us first and when Iran retaliates they say Israel has a right to defend itself. It’s hypocrisy in broad daylight.
Using the nuclear enrichment and weapons is a decoy and a false premise. Netanyahu has wanted to topple Iran and invade since 2000. There’s videos of him saying it in congress. He specifically named Iraq, Syria, Lybia and Iran. They got 3 out of the 4 and now they wanna come for Iran.
You’d be naive and blind to think Israeli army or Americans won’t target civilians. They would bomb all universities, airports, bridges, railroads, ports, electric and oil fields and anything they want. Look at what they did in Iraq, Syria, Lybia and gaza. What makes you think they won’t do the same in Iran?
On top of all that the scary thing is Iran has a lot of enemies in the region. Many countries want to see Iran fall. And Iran unfortunately has a lot of separatist traitors. This would create a power vacuum and civil war and anarchy. If we want revolution it must be for the people and by the people, not outside intervention. If you have issues with your family and hate them, you wouldn’t side with your family’s enemy, even though you might hate them…
We’re the nation of Cyrus the great, Darius, Xerxes, Nader shah, Reza shah, Ferdowsi….Where is your pride and honor? We’re 90 million strong and 75 times larger than Israel. Our ancestors would turn in their grave if they saw the Iranians that side with enemy and are so naive to think they want the best for us. Why would they spend billion of dollars and fight for me and you? Thinkkkk
If you’re asking why Iran won’t negotiate. Iran was negotiating. Negotiations don’t take just one day. Even during the nuclear deal in 2015 signed with Obama administration it took them 3-4 years. A deal which the US ripped apart and left under Trumps first term.
A 6th session of negotiations was set for Sunday June 15th, but Israel attacked Iran on June 12. Sabotaging any negotiations and they killed all out top nuclear scientists and chief negotiators. What does that signal? They don’t want negotiation it was all lies all along. Even Trump was saying negotiations was going well a couple days before June 15th and suddenly they attacked. They cannot be trusted.
We have no one but ourselves. All these western democracies that scream and champion for human rights and freedom are silent and won’t help us. They don’t care about us. Believe me they don’t. They sell weapons to Israel and they sold weapons to Iraq in 1980s. The same countries that coward and traitor Iranians side with are the ones selling weapons to Israel. Our beloved brothers and sisters are dying and getting wounded with the weapons these champions of democracy and human rights (USA, Germany, France, UK….) give Israel. They’re all hypocrites. They will set us back 50 years or more by targeting highways, airports, universities and hospitals and all infrastructure. They turned a blind eye when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and helped Iraq and they’re doing the same with Israel’s invasion. They never wanted to see a strong Iran through history. They ousted the Shah and left him too.
Even Reza Shah or his son would not bow down to this or surrender to any foreign government. Have some pride and honor and remember your 3000 year old history and culture. They’d wipe away our nationality and history.
Those who side with and help the enemy of our motherland and nation just because they’re against the current government would sell their soul, family and own countrymen too. They have no soul, honor or integrity.
Now a if a regime change is in the cards, it is in the hands of the Iranian people.
Both Trump and Tulsi Gabbard (pre election) was running a "no war" platform with heavy connotation of "deep state" and wars only serving special interests (including Israel). My impression was that this outsider aspect really bought many libertarian and non-hawk republicans vote.
Hell, Gabbard was even branded Russian parrot after trying to talk to Assad, running as an independent after that. She even disagreed about this strike not even 3 months ago, 1 month ago and few days ago, with Trump.
But now they support it. They all just lied during election is the most probable reason but at least Gabbard have been saying same thing since 2016 election, 8 years, and all it took was Israel striking to go "aight let's go".
Is there just some information available to high official positions that makes you turn 180 on your opinion as soon as you get access to it, or what.
Much of the money fueling election campaigns flows from entrenched defense contractors, lobbyists, and think tanks. That momentum has more predictive power than what the current "Commander-in-chief" claims they'll do.
Campaign rhetoric may change, but policy is harder, and this is another reason to believe that US democracy is a veneer.
If another country bombed the US, and then their system of government was like, "oh well it isn't technically war cause it was just our single head honcho making his own decision. But good news, our second government entity officially declared not going to war with you, kthxbye srry lol", that logic isn't going to fly in the US. The US is gonna retaliate and consider it an act of war, because it was bombed by a foreign power... damage being already done.
How the heck can Trump do this. I get it if the US got attacked, then it's useless to wait for congress to decide war-or-not-war... but this literally puts the US on a direct war path with Iran. the US literally just bombed another country unprovoked.
And Trump said he hated war, which was his platform when running. He was gonna end the war in Ukraine because nobody wins and war is nasty. What is going on.. why is Congress so spineless too. They probably won't even do anything. This is the worst timeline ever.
It's been this way since the Vietnam war, it not the Korean war. Every president since then has been able to engage in relatively small military operations without congressional approval. And the UN is what ended formal declarations of war, too. Basically Congress can stop military actions started by the President by taking the money away or not providing it to begin with, but if the operation is small then it's a fait accompli before Congress can do anything about it.
See the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Libya, Syria, etc.
There is no other interpretation when bombs and missiles are sent 'in anger' to a sovereign nation, no matter which side is "bad".
Hint: all sides are bad.
Violence and conflict creators and propagators are bad.
He’s a career con artist, that’s what’s going on.
- Did not sign the non-proliferation treaty
- Does not allow IAEA inspectors into their country
- Nuclear weapons program widely believed to have started from material stolen from the US
- Prime Minister wanted by the ICC for war crimes.
Since 2023, they have:
- Invaded and occupied parts of Syria and Lebanon
- Bombed Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen
- Killed nearly 70,000 people in Gaza
The Islamic Republic of Iran appears sane, rational, and peaceful by comparison. Quite an achievement!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread
So yes, there's quite a lot I am glossing over.
Iran is by no means a sane country, not even compared to present-day Israel.
- massive instability in the ME. Just a few men with shoulder fired missiles can disrupt oil shipments from the biggest oil producers
- the high chance of being sucked into a forever war. Iran can cause a lot of problems with limited resources and can rebuild. They have no reason to give up and the US might have to continue bombing indefinitely, or launch a ground invasion.
- the increased chance of nuclear war in the ME. This action assumes that Iran has no backup facilities, or will never have, to continue building a bomb. Having already suffered the consequences, Iran has no reason not to seek a bomb.
Libya is nowhere near the Middle East. It's not even the Near East. It's in northern Africa.
2) This was before our war with Canada and just after our Quasi-war with France.
Before Israel? Like before 1947? When half the place was under British rule and the oil industry was a fraction of what it was today?
That's about as useful as saying that before the atomic bomb, we had no enemies in the Middle East.
What a dishonest way to make such an inflammatory accusation.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v07/d5...
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v07/d4...
Any other president would be infuriated with Bibi's actions, because they would know he's cornering the US. But he knew Trump was a pushover.
Well Israel's security forces were out to lunch on that score, given how Hamas literately walked all over them, so I can see how you might think that.
But don't let me get in your way while you try to divert attention away from Trump's current recklessness.
Just one phone call from Biden saying STOP would have halted everything, but Biden is a self-admitted Zionist who never really wanted to stop things.
https://christiansfortruth.com/the-road-to-dealey-plaza-how-...
https://web.archive.org/web/20201224040114/https://archive.4...
then later
> The most ominous part of Ben-Gurion’s letter was when he wrote: “Mr. President, my people have the right to exist – both in Israel and wherever they may live, and this existence is in danger.”
This article is funny. This is set in 1960. 10 years after Israel was attacked by an Arab coalition and 10 years before Israel was attacked AGAIN by guess who, an Arab coalition.
What do you expect, that president of a country lets it to be destroyed to later tell people like you "see, told ya"? Time doesn't allow you to go back. You can hate war but in this case it just seems like if they had no nukes they would be destroyed long ago by neighboring countries.
About 4chan link, Techchrunch basically sums it up:
> One 4chan janitor who spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity said they are “confident” the leaked data and screenshots are “all real”.
Yeah totally real. because 4chan was hacked by a competitor we can be sure there was nothing planted in the dump. And because the guy who posted the screenshot limits replies we can be sure it is doubly real.
Thinking how much antisemitism there was on 4chan I can only shrug.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-pr...
if you think it's one-sided you're either severely misinformed or bigoted.
In reality though, I have completed 5 CENTCOM US military deployments. There are few people on HN more qualified to speak to the nature of US alliances in the region.
Saudi, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, HTS, and majority of Middle East is not in favor of Iran getting a nuke.
Hatred of Iran, is a unifying force.
Many in the west see the middle east as a broadly similar unit, not realizing that there Iran represents a frequently highly-disliked section in the broader area. The neutralization of Iraq definitely has had an impact on that front as well (the two being hard core enemies for a long time).
Looking forward to the strait of Hormuz shutting down...
China is the only country that can help Iran.
I disagree, given the high probability they were going to do it anyway. They built Natanz enrichment in secret, they built Arak in secret, they built Fordow in secret, not to mention the more recent violations of the NPT to which they're still a signatory. They've violated the NPT over and over and over again. Why would one more agreement make any difference to their clandestine program?
This is the thing Western liberals need to understand. The leaders of these despotic regimes don't think like you. They don't intend to adhere to the agreements like you would. Their psychology is different to your psychology. And you can't make a unilateral agreement with a party like this. The agreement becomes a weapon to creep forward and present the world with a fait accompli at a future date.
First Western liberals needed to understand that Ukraine shouldn't have given up its nukes. Now they need to understand that Iran shouldn't have tried to get them.
Oh, I've seen this one before! Then you install a police state, back it up with foreign weapons you sell to the police state in exchange for taxpayer money, forcibly "disappear" any disagreeable types and make the entire population hate your country for centuries to come!
https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/legal-and-political-mag...
Did "western liberals" get all that? Oh, I forgot this line by mistake!And why are people so willing to believe that military force works? It mostly achieves nothing and leads to more violence.
It didn't work in Afghanistan, Iraq or Ukraine, but it will in Iran?
They're not stupid, but they are naive. Look at UN Resolution 1701. Hezbollah agreed to disarm. Then, they just ... didn't.
Predictably, there was no self-reflection among the people that believe in the primacy of diplomacy. This chain of events may as well have not even happened in their minds.
Then when Hezbollah attacks Israel, the same people call for more diplomacy, instead of telling Israel to just win the war against the group that has proven to be unwilling to adhere to agreements.
Then when Israel won the war, finally there was a reconstitution of the Lebanese sovereignty over South Lebanon, which would not have occurred under any diplomatic solution. But predictably, still no self-reflection from any of the people that tried to pursue diplomacy.
I also disagree they want peace. They want "peace", meaning appeasement and kicking the can down the road, and meaning they don't have to be bothered hearing about this stressful news cycle anymore.
For the second, I don’t think anything other than an air campaign like it’s been done will happen, it’s not like the USA is out for blood like after 9/11.
For the third, yeah, that’s unfortunately possible, North Korea, Ukraine and now this show that the only way no one messes with you is by having a good enough deterrent. However, even if this hadn’t happened, if Iran got a bomb, they wouldn’t threaten like nk does to get stuff, it would just test it on Israel, so you would get nuclear war anyway.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/17/trump-iran-i...
I think it is important for the people of the world to get an idea how things are unfolding.
It should be an animation of the exchanges both verbally and physically. Have a complete set of news sources for each action.
The BBC is not something you can trust to report on anything. I can't even see a date with the article? Pictures of the situation room??? Trump's name written in gold??What a waste of my time.
Games from the 90's provide better visualizations than anything online today.
It sounds trite to say from a position of relative comfort and distance, but I can only hope that someday our better selves will find peace with each other, around the globe.
But we won't be able to undo all the injustices and atrocities that we inflicted upon each other. We know these wrongs as we are doing them, and they will remain upon us.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/sR8YhcY.png
This will be one of the single-most proliferation-inducing events in history, maybe save Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This war is quite paradigm shifting in multiple ways, and I'm hopeful it serves as a strong deterrent. No longer will soldiers be the first to die. The leadership is now first to die, and within a week. That significantly alters the incentives for pursuing war. This was never the case until today.
deterrence works. we should admit it
The US convinced Ukraine to give up its nukes and return them to Russia. Russia was supposed to never attack in exchange.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
According to Putin...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-21/putin-says-whole-of-u...
/s in case it's not obvious.
Putin is a sociopath, which equips him with all the necessary tools to charm the easily flattered.
The extent to which condemning something approaching genocide is accused of being an anti-semitic position is... telling.
Not to say that there aren't ridiculous levels of complexity to the whole situation, but the pendulum is being held very far to one side by the king.
Iran having nukes would mean peace in the Middle East.
9 countries exist. So much for self-determination.
The lesson here is not to make idle threats against half of the world that you don’t honestly mean.
Russia and China can’t project power either. Only few countries can and the US is the best at it.
The scenario was already war gamed during the Biden administration, it was already a possible outcome. The G7 already backed this idea that Iran can't have this before, and they'll do it again. The US doesn't stand alone on this, Saudi Arabia and basically everyone in the region and world doesn't want Iran having a nuke sans Russia/China. I'm not even sure if Russia/China really want it either. It's just common sense.
You're saying that there exists some country capable of a nuclear weapons program (an exceedingly difficult thing), that for some reason has not actually built one, and now that they see Iran pummeled for trying to build theirs... is now incentivized to finally go for it??
* the Swiss nuclear weapons programme ran for over four decades during the Cold War
I'm personally of the opinion that the Israeli operation forced Trump's hand and he realized that he can't trust the Iranians going forward since they have no reason to trust us going forward. That's just my opinion; I obviously can't expect anybody else negotiating nuclear non-proliferation (or anything else related to war or peace) with America in the future to have such an optimistic outlook on this turn of events.
If the Israelis did force his hand then I personally can accept that he made the tough call that needed to be made in that moment, but then the next call needs to be distancing us from the Israelis because we can't have an ally that fucks everything up when we're negotiating, *especially* when they literally assassinated the guy who was negotiating with Trump on Iran's behalf.
The news of the US entering a war, with a first-strike major bombing, is extremely serious.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
He has betrayed his core by letting Israel suck our country into another Middle Eastern conflict, after promising to do the opposite.
Trump promised LESS war with Ukraine while having softer backing for Israel and (generally) turning down the heat during his first presidency.
I never voted for him, but I can certainly see why so many anti-war voters did as he had the most anti-war rhetoric around other than Ron Paul's libertarian run and maybe Bernie Sanders (with his primary getting stolen by Hillary).
They differ on many axis, but not this one.
I won't comment or discuss who you voted for - that isn't germane here. What is important is that America has been working for decades - often quite blatantly, sometimes with the thinnest veneer of deniability - to stop Iran from getting nukes. We're now just saying the quiet part out loud.
1. America is a continent. You probably mean the USA.
2. What the US has been working to stop Iran from is being independent of its near-control - which it had gained with the 1953 CIA-fomented coup d'etat against the Mossadegh government, and lost again in 1979 when the Islamist-headed faction of the rebellion gained power. While it's true that the US would not like Iran to have nuclear weapons, that has served more as an excuse to try and suppress it rather than actual motivation.
#2 is not worth responding to, as you didn't feel the need to respond to my broader point: anti-proliferation in the middle east has been a long-pursued initiative by the west and much of the rest of the world for decades.
Here are the facts:
1. Iran may or may not have been building a nuclear weapon. US intelligence says they were at least 3 years away.
2. Iran did not attack Israel. Israel attacked Iran.
3. Iran did not attack the US. The US bombed Iran only because Israel asked the US to do so.
Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah are supported by Iran.
Most of the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels come directly from the US. That does not mean the US supports the actions of the drug cartels.
Every time I try to talk to someone online and they start with "you are/your arguments are stupid", that says more about the person saying it than anything else. I won't continue.
> Hezbollah's 1985 manifesto outlined its key objectives, which include expelling Western influence from the region, destroying Israel, pledging allegiance to Iran's supreme leader...
When you peel back the baseless rhetoric this issue is completely one sided.
Iran had nothing to do with the Oct7 attack on Israeli civilians. They were not part of the planning, had no prior knowledge of it, and supplied no material support for it.
Actually, let’s take this to the next level. Iran did provide financial support to Hamas. So, did Israel.
* https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up...
* https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/qatar-sent-millions-to-...
* https://www.businessinsider.com/israel-security-forces-escor...
> Israel is a hideous entity in the middle east which will undoubtedly be annihilated.
> Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon (Israel). We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region.
> Western countries allow no freedom of expression, which they claim to advocate, with regard to the myth of the massacre of Jews known as the holocaust, and nobody in the West enjoys the freedom of expression to deny it or raise doubts about it.
- Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
Those who defend the Iranian regime or suggest that the Israeli government is the greater threat do so to their disgrace. SMH.
If the current regime stays in power, it's pretty much a guarantee that they will pursue nuclear weapons by all means available, in the future.
If the US / Israel want to topple the regime... that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan....
Also, isn't it really illegal for a US president to authorize a strike like this without Congress ?
Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for decades - and no one, especially no one in the middle east - wants a nuclear armed Iran. America and its partners - and quite often its not-partners - have been working to stop Iranian uranium enrichment for a very long time.
As for "guarantees they will pursue nuclear weapons by all means" -- that's the point: they've already been doing so nonstop for decades.
In much of the middle east, Iran is detested, and a nuclear armed Iran is deeply feared throughout the region. Iran with nukes means the rest of the middle east will feel compelled to pursue nuclear weapons as well. Again, in vast swaths of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy.
I think that was the plan. Israeli and american and turkish planes are now freely flying over Syria , iraq, (i assume also afghanistan) to conduct attacks. Iran is being set up as theater for long proxy war. The rest of middle east and libya is controlled by turkey & israel which seem to have complementary interests as proxies of the US. At the moment it appears the US/israeli dominance in the whole former Ottoman empire is strong, but inevitably (and quickly) we will see dozens of unconventional wars in the region (what we call terrorism)
Then, they wouldn't be organized enough to build a nuclear weapon. That would be a better outcome.
Thanks for calling, goodnight.
Iran getting nukes is the spark that will start a lot of chain reactions.
And islamic populations are radicalized enough that the possibility of a nuke on Israel increases dramatically.
A fair concern, but it is interesting that although "estimates of Israel's stockpile range between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads" [1], we are not concerned about those warheads as much as we do about the ones Iran might have. Should US bomb Israeli nuclear plants? No. Should they have bombed the Iranian ones? Why?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Arabs
Now, I don't know if you noticed, your cousins while they are not kind to Arabs (which if you had Arab cousins you would have noticed that they are not very kind to Jews), have nothing whatsoever with Iran, no more than they have anything with Napal.
1500km away!
We have to let Israel die off and change our alliances. An alliance with Iran would be much more beneficial to America than an alliance with Israel.
The next facilities they build will be a few times deeper, and I have no doubt we’ll soon be hearing that ground troops are the only way to stop them.
I don't know how long these operations will set them back, but if the Iranian regime won't willingly refrain from nuclear weapons work, isn't a delay better than nothing?
There are a lot of reasons to be enriching uranium besides building nuclear weapons. Considering the US reneged on its deal to drop sanctions in exchange for Iran to not enrich uranium, it is pretty obviously useful as a bargaining chip, in the negotiations.
The US intelligence community assessed that Iran has not been working on a bomb since the program was shut down in 2003. They didn't want a nuke, they wanted an end to sanctions. They further wanted to avoid provoking exactly this sort of conflict. This did not delay them getting nuclear weapons, it will make them get nuclear weapons.
These attacks make it clear that they would have been better off if they had gotten them, so it seems reasonable to assume this will be their new policy. What other strategic choice have they been left with?
Being an NPT signatory could be evidence of Iran not working toward nuclear weapons, if they were compliant. But they have violated their NPT obligations on some occasions, with major violations recently.
Now they likely do intend to get them asap if they’re able to.
And the development of a nuclear sites leaves a significant intelligence trail, not sure it can be hidden.
(Of course they can always be gifted a bomb, but that's a very different story)
I have not lived in the US, and I know a lot about the US national character.
That is not a good comparison. The US is well reported enough in news and media and movie to have a good awareness of the culture within. You also understand their language.
However, the Arab world is not reported well enough apart from biased sources that seek to defame and discredit them. And neither would you understand their language. So no your awareness of their culture and country and leadership is so far fallen yet you think it is sufficient that it becomes dangerous.
There is no such thing as Islamic population unless you are an Islamophobe who have sought to “other” this part of the world
How do you plan to handle a world with Islamic populations having nukes? Because that's something you will have to plan for. You have no choice. They will not let you not let them have nukes. They will make sure they will have nukes. That's just given.
I know "empire" is maybe an outdated term but I'm just illustrating there are bigger incentives than at the national level. Ironically it is conservative nationalists (who are hated by the Left) that want the empire to shrink and for the US to pull back from this leadership position. The risk here is it could also destabilize the entire world, but that's a different matter.
In short, this move is an attempt to strengthen the status quo that began after WW2.If the status quo is maintained it directly benefits the US.
I'm seeing a lot of death and the payoff is... Cheap gas prices? I can't imagine what. But the replies to this laying out all the benefits of blood soaked American hegemony I'm sure will be great for a laugh.
Of course, that historical record is being shat upon currently, and the importance of petroleum is on a downward trajectory from here on.
The status quo is only maintained because the US has military bases all over the world. If we retreat from the world and let Iran do whatever it wants (which is more influence and an Islamic empire), the the world order crumbles and that has an even more increased chance of WW3, as multiple nations will fight over the void left behind by the US.
Part of the reason things are unfolding this way is because the US rose to world power with the invention of the nuclear bomb.... which automatically means that toppling the US might mean nuclear war, which spells doom for the entire world. Not sure I would call that luck, but that is why the world cannot change to a new world order easily without existential risk. And as the "world police" the US doesn't want non-allies to get the bomb for this reason (something that Trump has been saying for years, which proves he is just maintaining status quo).
The third temple's holy of holies : Israel's nuclear weapons
https://dp.la/item/525bc46d51878c5e285d9069a80246d0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei%27s_fatwa_against...
* Quick, victorious wars can be incredibly popular domestically, regardless of whether surveys say that only 16% of the US population supports the war. Trump needs an approval ratings boost. The global tariff shock was a PR disaster. A quick, victorious war is a tried-and-true approval rating booster over the last 200-300 years. The key, of course, is actually keeping the war truly short and victorious. If it drags on, or if people start asking "have we truly won?", then that's a whole different matter.
* We have moved out of a unipolar geopolitical world and into a multipolar one. The USA is checking the ambitions of the rival powers. Want to invade Ukraine? Sure, go ahead and try, but it will be a multi-year slog. Want to go for years maybe developing nuclear weapons, maybe not, and making US antagonism a central part of your political platform? Watch us systematically attack your nuclear program and and air power and do highly targeted assassinations of your political elites over the course of two weeks. Want to invade Taiwan? Look at what happened in Ukraine and Iran and maybe reset your expectations about how that will pan out.
* There has been a lot of questioning lately around whether the US will actually help their allies when they're in a pinch. This is sending a pretty strong message of reassurance to allies.
* Trump may actually want things to escalate to a point where he can reasonably declare martial law within the US. How do you stay in power when you've already hit your two-term constitutional limit?
Your question was "how does it benefit the US?" but I don't think that's answerable because everyone has a different take on what's best for the US. It's much more feasible to discuss "how does it benefit Trump?" or "how does it maintain US's position as a world power?"
Contrast that to the situation today, when polls show Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to involvement [1] and even some prominent Republican legislators (Gaetz, IIRC) were against the war. This is the Trump show: it's motivated by his ego and hopium. He's more erratic than ever. Historically, American presidents almost never started a major war without popular support (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were all popular when they started, and I think Libya and Kosovo were too). I can't even think of a case where the country was dragged into a war that was opposed 60% to 16% in favor. I would be very interested to hear if there ever was one.
1: https://www.axios.com/2025/06/19/israel-iran-war-americans-p...
Where did you get that info? Makes no sense. South Korea has been consistently against starting another war with NK for at least 30 years or so, and besides, in 2003 South Korea was ruled by Kim Dae-Jung, famous for he's staunch support of improving relations with North Korea (he got a Nobel prize for that), and then Roh Moo-Hyun, from the same party and largely following Kim's foreign policy.
Thanks to them we had no wars, and of course now we have some young whippersnappers complaining about their "pro-NK" policies, saying we could have totally bombed NK, starting a war, and burning the peninsula to the ground, but at least North Korea won't have nukes today!
It was after the Six Party Talks started in Aug 2003 that tensions started cooling down, before North Korea stunned the world in 2006.
Edit: though now that I think about it, I might be confusing this incident with the 1993-94 incident.
Why don't you go die!
I don't mean it literally, read: https://www.mypersiancorner.com/death-to-america-explained-o...
Isn't it great when people take things out of context? In this case the context that wishing death is quite common in Iranian expressions of frustrations?
That even better supports my point though. Diplomacy is between two governments, not one government and the population of another government. Iran has practiced diplomacy at times, but calling for the end of the US government wouldn't exactly fit well in the implied reality of Iran having done everything they could diplomatically.
Israel has nukes and Hamas still invaded them.
Perhaps nukes protect you from invasion by rational actors, but I don't think they work on zealots.
I certainly hope Iran's adversaries are rational actors.
You need to have delivery mechanisms like medium/long range ballistic missiles and second strike capabilities like SLCMs.
Frankly you're not going to have a very strong chance of convincing me given Israel's actions over the past few years.
Israel has led an amazingly succesful campaign in presenting their problems (often arising out of their territorial ambitions) as a problem for the entire west.
Here’s a list, make of that what you want: https://x.com/chalavyishmael/status/1936107345093996775?s=46
The US is leaving many moments for Iran to come to the table to stop building towards nuclear power.
The root problem is the military is controlled by various factions of lunatics that want to see the end of Israel. It's these people ought to be mercilessly killed and I have no qualms once so ever advocating for brutal violence and (preferably) murder against them.
How much does Iran spend sponsoring terrorism?
So tired of american bullshit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
We can in fact just as easily support Iran's attacks against Israel. No reason to pick either side.
Right now the American people are coming to the consensus that Israel are the bad guys. Everybody under 50 already recognizes that, purely based on the thousands of Palestinian toddlers they see on Instagram that Israel kills and injures (the popular post today on Instagram is of a toddler with his legs severed). And the people over 50 will eventually die off, causing Israel's base of support to disappear.
There is no hope of Israel's permanent existence. We should remove our support for Israel immediately and prepare for the long term.
they are also punishing iran for selling oil in their national currency
imperialism run amok
They aren't ready to directly start that war. They are trying to cut off the alliances first. Iran is a much smaller country (90M vs over a billion) with a lot of oil. Conveniently, Iran is already so dehumanized many Americans don't even recognize their rights to sovereignty.
> their main motivation is they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
No. They have been trying to attack Iran since the revolution. It's similar to how Cuba embarrassed America and was never forgiven. If Iran wanted a weapon they'd have one. However, these attacks may force Iran to get one because countries with nuclear weapons appear to actually have sovereignty. Iran of course retains the possibility of making one, hoping that will have the same effect, but it appears that doesn't do it.
A nuclear iran would be completely intolerable, never mind that their regime might just be lunatic enough to use them.
Add that war is bad for the whole world.
So the us benefits that it protects her economic (and strategic) interests in the ME, which are real and extremely important, at the low cost of a limited air campaign.
There are further moral arguments, but i'm answering your question in the most direct way.
Israel doesn't start any wars, it just finishes them. Hamas, hezbolla, syria, yemen and iran started up with Israel for no good reason. So they end up with a bloody nose. That's on them.
> Hamas, hezbolla, syria, yemen and iran started up with Israel for no good reason
If the UN decided to put a country for the Roma in the middle of India, how do you think that turn out? Very well or very badly? Is it surprising that everything turned out so badly in the ME with regards Israel? Seems obvious to me that putting a new country in the middle of a colony just as said colony is gaining independence seems like a shit idea?
Simply put, the very creation of Israel was fundamentally destabilising. We basically torpedoed our relations with the entire Islamic world (and especially the Arab world) just for the sake of some mostly (at that time) European colonists in Israel (who later became Israelis). That was retarded as shit. Say what you like about how good it was for the Israelis, but for us that was shit geopolitics, shit realpolitik, and a shit deal. Israel has now, rather predictably, become an ethnofascist state run by a (war)criminal. And we enabled them the whole way. And for what??? How exactly has anyone in the West actually benefited from this? It was clearly good for Israel and for Israelis, but how have we benefited from this???
the West benefits from israel that at least one country in the region isn't an authoritarian hellhole and actually contributes to the global economy beyond just providing petrol.
You might resent it but that's the truth.
> region isn't an authoritarian hellhole
It's colonising the West Bank, committing genocide in Gaza, is led by a (war)criminal... Israel is arguably worse than many of its neighbours. I honestly don't care how good gay people have it in Tel Aviv when they're simultaneously committing genocide in Gaza or settling the West Bank like it's 1899. And yeah Israel is a democracy but they use their democratic choice to vote for a war criminal who's in bed with the settlers and other theocratic extremists. So Israel is really no better than many of its neighbours and arguably worse than many of them. And it's only getting worse, the Israelis are only becoming crazier and more extreme. And now they've got the US into a war with Iran. Sorry, 0.5% of GDP: not fucking worth it.
Says Israel, the nation who tore up every single international laws, directly led campaign against UN and ICC, and whose right-wing (ones in power now) have been dreaming about a Greater Israel that threatens territorial integrity of like 10 different ME countries.
If we want their oil, we can buy it like reasonable people do. What you're referring to is armed robbery.
>Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east
Is this a joke? The country that has not started any wars in its 300 year existence is not the "destabilizing element". That would be the country that has attacked Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran this year alone.
The situation was and remains unstable, and the factors that made it unstable were did not come from just one place. And you don’t have to look hard to find acts of war initiated by multiple different parties in the area.
I think that claiming that any one country “decided to launch wars” against multiple other parties ignores a whole lot of complexity.
It's logical for the West to work to prevent that from being a possibility.
Iran/persia is far older then 300 years old. But again you somehow missed the point. I was talking about the current 40 year old regime, which while not having directly started any wars, have since the beginning declared their intentions to do so against America and Israel.
Really you are being deliberately obtuse.
Oh, and how did it come to power?
This is the end of any hope. Iran will now do everything in its power to get one. And it has all the skills it needs.
Refinement keeps getting easier.
- Russia warned NATO for decades to not keep coming closer.
- Israel kept warning the world it would directly attack Iran if they kept getting closer to a Nuke.
- Trump warned Iran, and followed through on his warnings.
- The Iranian regime kept telling the world they wanted the genocide of Jews and attack Americans.
The demented Iranian leaders kept feeding hypnotic battle-cries to their military troops about taking down some of the most technologically advanced nations. They just got a reality check.
The US actually ends Iran's nuclear program, they quit trying and obey ... because we bombed them?
Most of the recent middle east history doesn't seem to ever end as much as just go through a continuous cycle of violence creating more of what the folks condoning violence claim they're preventing.
Hard to see this being achievable over a just a couple of years if at all.
We knew about these sites because they have been under IAEA supervision for many years.
The smart thing for Iran to do at this point is do what Israel did: not submit to any arms control and develop their own weapons in secret. Clearly this is the only way to be safe when people in Tel Aviv and Washington are openly discussing the "Libya solution."
According to the IAEA, Iran has around 400kg of 60% enriched Uranium. Nobody disputes this. There is zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 5% for civilian purposes, and zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 20% for non-bomb purposes (naval ship reactors typically use higher enrichment to avoid refueling and increase power density). That's enough Uranium to build around 10 bombs if fully enriched. They've done work on designing the actual bomb itself, too, and there's very little dispute about that either.
They have a nuclear weapons program. What Iran hasn't done, or there's no evidence of them having done, is actually start putting one together. But many of the prerequisites to do so are in place, though people dispute exactly how long it would take them to pull it off once they decided to do so.
Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, March 2025:
"the IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program." [1]
Please explain how "Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program" is grammar hacking the above quote.
[1] https://youtu.be/nOhOqjx1y18?t=701
You wouldn't argue that the Manhattan Project wasn't a "real" nuclear weapons program until they started physically building the prototype.
"doing the research and design required to build a nuclear weapon" ... "enriching uranium for the purpose of building a nuclear weapon"
Gabbard says "Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons," but if there was knowledge they were actually building a nuclear weapon, she would have said so.
I could believe, but haven't seen claimed, that Iran was doing R&D in order to shorten the time between deciding they want an atomic bomb and having one completed. Or perhaps to have a second-order deterrent ("we could make a bomb") not a first order deterrent ("we have a bomb"). I think it's a big difference from actually trying to make one. Maybe you disagree on that point.
False.
https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/69513/7643
Iran is considered a bellicose enemy in much of the middle east. A nuclear-armed Iran would quickly lead to the rest of the middle east pursing their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran.
A nuclear armed Iran leads to rapid nuclear proliferation throughout the middle east.
I remember an old interview of Robert Fisk where in which his analysis was that the only way to stay safe from attacks like this was to have a nuclear weapon.
I can't think of any other way. Their rhetoric is needlessly belligerent but it doesn't seem like there's anything they can do to guarantee their own safety.
As a Libertarian Central European, i appreciate these attacks. Fuck Mullahs and Muslims.
President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites on Saturday helped rid the world of a grave nuclear threat and was a large step toward restoring U.S. deterrence. It also creates an opportunity for a more peaceful Middle East, if the nations of the region will seize it.
“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Mr. Trump said Saturday night. He made clear Iran brought this on itself. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying ‘death to America,’ ‘death to Israel.’ They’ve been killing our people,” he said, citing 1,000 Americans killed by Iran-supplied roadside bombs and other means. A nuclear Iran was a perilous threat to Israel, the nearby Arab states, and America.
Mr. Trump gave Iran every chance to resolve this peacefully. The regime flouted his 60-day deadline to make a deal. Then Israel attacked, destroying much of the nuclear program and achieving air supremacy, and still the President gave Iran another chance to come to terms. The regime wouldn’t even abandon domestic uranium enrichment. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted a bomb more than peace.
Military conflict is often unpredictable and the potential for Iranian retaliation can’t be dismissed, no matter how self-destructive it would be. Iran and its Iraqi proxies have threatened U.S. regional bases with missile fire, but Mr. Trump warned that “future attacks will be far greater” if Iran goes down that road. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and brought military assets into the region. If the regime values self-preservation, it will give up its nuclear ambitions and stand down.
Much of the press has fixated on the idea that Mr. Trump has now joined or even started a conflict. But Iran has been waging regional and terrorist war for decades. It’s as likely that he has helped end it. Leaving Iran with a hardened nuclear enrichment facility after an Israeli military campaign would have been a recipe for maximum danger, all but asking Iran to sprint to a bomb.
At the same time, the Israeli campaign yielded a unrivaled strategic opportunity. Suddenly, Iran’s airspace was uncontested. Its substantial ballistic-missile program was degraded. Several of its proxies had been bludgeoned into silence. Its nuclear program had been reduced to a few key sites, one of which only U.S. weapons could be trusted to penetrate.
The opportunity to act and the danger of standing pat may have proved decisive. We would say that they left Mr. Trump little choice, except U.S. Presidents always have a choice, and have been known to kick the can down the road. To his credit, Mr. Trump didn’t, hitting the Fordow enrichment site as well as Natanz and Isfahan. This shows the President wanted to leave no doubt about Iran’s nuclear program and take it all down.
Good for him for meeting the moment, despite the doubts from part of his political base. The isolationists were wrong at every step leading up to Saturday, and now they are again predicting another Iraq, if not a road to World War III. Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America, which is his first obligation as President.
“History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night. Mr. Trump thanked him and said “we worked as a team.” The Israelis, who proved their strategic value as an ally, would like to complete the mission by destroying what remains of Iran’s missile infrastructure. They deserve a green light, especially as those missiles are threatening U.S. bases.
The chatter about TACO—“Trump always chickens out”—will now quiet down, but the more significant reassessment has to do with U.S. foreign policy. The Obamaites of the left, and lately of the right, counseled that the world had to bow to Iranian intimidation. The best we could hope for was a flimsy deal that bribed Iran with billions and left open its path to a bomb. They were wrong.
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
US spend a decade fighting in Afghanistan and 0 years in Pakistan despite UBL being in Pakistan.
9/11 was used as an excuse to for these regime change wars. There are old videos where they were talking about doing this in the 2000s.
And even nuclear armed nations aren’t exactly able to use their weapons to devastate an opponents military - see Ukraine and Russia.
Today countries as various as Brazil and Australia are independent, sovereign nations. Even Ukraine which was invaded by nuclear-armed Russia is still sovereign and fighting. Iran for that matter still has its sovereignty, they just lost some military assets.
But I largely agree, if you aren't a giant economy and you don't have nukes - then if the US or Russia accesses you of building nukes, you need to start building nukes ASAP.
Well the prime minister who was elected promising not to bend the knee to Trump has bent the knee to trump.
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2025/06/20/Carney-Elbows-Down/
Even despite Trump, I think the US and many western countries have actual friends that would show up if bad things happened.
It looks like it might even be Iran.
Israel only just (before this US bombing) claimed they had set Iran's nuclear program back by 2-3 years. I found the timing of the announcement curious.
This after suffering extensive damage from direct missile strikes (Haifa port/refinery, Mossad headquarters, Wiezmann institute, C4I/cyber defense, etc). I think the missile strikes have been much more damaging than expected and understandably under-reported. Weapons expert Ted Postol of MIT claims Israel's missile defense is only intercepting around 5%.
I think Israel will be very unhappy if things continue to escalate without further US involvement. Depending on how Iran retaliates against the US, further involvement might not be forthcoming. We've seen seen Iran attack a US base in Jordan without causing escalation from the US. Could expect something similar.
Do you have a link to this? I’m curious to read more.
From about 2:50
Also talks about the likely success of the 'bunker busters' at Fodrow.
mossad hq - miss. hit sewage instead https://imgur.com/a/L3PUqCi
weizman - bombed wing that contains cancer and rare deceases research labs. amazing
C4I/cyber defense. missed. hit soroka hospital.
But even a not very effective permutation of a dirty bomb seems like it could lead to headlines that look more "positive" for their leadership. (IE create outsized headlines.)
I hope the US can use hindsight right now to guide the next decisions.
Otherwise uncle Sam will let you know you have them
Remember that in much of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy.
Iran's religious dictator issued a Fatwa declaring nukes haram. This is why they've consistently stopped at 60% enrichment.
In a religious cult, everything rides on the leadership. He can't just come out and change his mind. He must have a very definitive reason that doesn't disagree with the reasoning in the previous Fatwa. His only real out is an existential threat where threatening a nuke becomes a tool to preserve lives.
Israel and the US have now given him that out. It remains to be seen if he actually takes it.
If Iran is willing to use its nuclear weapons in response to this (limited, conventional air strikes), then that's a clear demonstration they aren't rational actors and can't be trusted with nuclear weapons.
I'm old enough to remember when we (the US) ran this exact playbook, except the last letter was 'q' instead of 'n'.
Spoiler: the B-2 played a part in both of the big wars we lost in the last couple of decades. The problem hinges on the definition of "work": yes, the bombs hit what they are aimed at. No, that does not result in operational success without a coherent theory of victory.
What happened next? Did it go to plan? Nearly to plan? Close enough to plan that one could kind of squint and give partial credit? Worse than that?
Did the US lose more lives in Iraq (and kill more Iraqis) before or after "Mission Accomplished"?
saddam is gone and there was a regime change.
that's it. that's what we were talking about.
no need to go into other areas of the conversation that didn't exist before you came along to insert some reason why you feel justified defending a regime that oppresses women through a "morality police" force. i don't care why you think they should be allowed to have nukes. i'm sure you can argue for it all day. you don't need to get philosophical about what is "winning" or "working".
if you can't agree on objective reality and what we are discussing, we have nothing to discuss. move on
the US lost nearly 5,000 service members in Iraq. We are still paying for the $3 trillion the war cost. Americans derived no benefit whatsoever from the change of regime in Iraq, a country that had not attacked us.
As an American who lives in a US city not currently under attack by Iran, it is reasonable to ask why we should sign up for this again. This has absolutely zero with defending Iran. How they manage their domestic affairs has no bearing on me.
If there is a case to be made that we should curtail our urgent domestic policy goals in favor of another war thousands of miles from the US, it has not been made.
My concern is this: I have no dog in this fight, but now I am going to be asked to pay for it. And it working like it "worked" in Iraq is my primary concern on that front.
Isolating the first 3 weeks or so from an 8-year war to say that it "worked" is obviously a special kind of sophistry. I'm not sure what purpose is served by such an analysis, honestly.
Whether this is good or bad is something people can discuss. But I think it’s fleetingly difficult for me to see any sort of righteous high ground these days.
Any nuclear scientist today knows WAY more about the do's and don'ts of creating nukes than we did when muddling through the Manhattan project. Making basic uranium nukes is time consuming, but nothing too special.
The hard part (by far) is making the missiles to launch those nukes and hit the target. That part is so hard that we've continually failed to replace the Minuteman III which was designed before we even landed on the moon.
The thing about Trump's isolationism is that it's actually a passive aggressive position. Imagine you know which kids in your classroom are likely to fight and you take a policy of "I won't stop it if it happens", that's basically telling some of the kids "go ahead", so how is this isolationist?
Now, literally joining in on the fight when the kids pop off, that is uniquely Trumpian.
The PRC's only realistic hope is a soft power takeover which it seems mildly competent at progressing on. About to have a serious setback with the KMT recalls though.
You country can't even be bothered to meet its 2% NATO obligation, and now you're talking about pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and not to deter Russia, but to threaten the US? Canada and Iran both show how dangerous having state-run media is.
P.S. Fuck Russia too; we need to support Ukraine more.
Russia would simply take as much of Canada's arctic as it liked, right now, with or without Canada having nukes, if it weren't for the United States.
The Iranian government has frequently reference a goal of destroying Israel, a sovereign nation, and referred to the US in very disparaging (and biblical) terms. That doesn't justify direct attack, but it also isn't diplomatic.
Their stated goal, and the only goal that makes any sense, is to use it for deterrence. Attacking any major power unprovoked like that would wipe them off the face of the earth. Just like if Israel tried to nuke Russia or something, it would be complete suicide. They know that without nuclear weapons to defend themselves, they will be conquered and the current regime will be overthrown, it’s only a matter of time. They don’t have the military power to resist being conquered by the major world powers. But some nuclear bomb would be enough to deter conquest (as it would have probably deterred Russia from attacking the Ukrain).
I think Israel has legitimate fears here, but with enough military capacity and a strong alliance with the US attacking them would also be suicide. Attacking basically anyone around them would be suicide.
Get your news from somewhere other than Fox. This isn’t “evil bad guys want to kill everyone”. This is “theocraric dictatorship doesn’t want to get conquered/overthrown by a major world power”.
What the US was doing before Israel blew up its efforts.
The idea that iran has any interest in using nuclear weapons is so absurd that it's incredible any one could take this propaganda seriously. Every relevant country has at least second strike capabilities against Iran, so it would be suicidal in the extreme -- it's also highly likely that the handful of nukes they'd have would be mostly intercepted. They haven't even developed second strike themselves, so they'd almost certainly lose any nuclear capacity on first attempted use. Iran's capacity for nuclear agression with nukes, is tiny.
Iran having a nuclear weapon would be one of the most stabilising outcomes in the middle east, as it would prevent israel (which is the most violent, destablising state in the region) from acting with impunity. This is why israel has, for 30 years, been complaining that iran is "months away" from a bomb, and why for 20 years its being trying to precipitate a war to drag the US into.
Iran having a nuclear weapon is the best possible outcome for global security, precisely because its the only configuration of events which prevents israel from waging wars of aggression on its neighbors (syria, iran, et al.).
So... nothing?
> The idea that iran has any interest in using nuclear weapons is so absurd that it's incredible any one could take this propaganda seriously.
When a country repeatedly calls for the genocide of nations and peoples, over decades and various leaders, and funds dozens of terrorist groups which carry out unspeakable acts of depravity and violence against said peoples, why on Earth would you think they don't mean it? Why would having more destructive power suddenly make them less violent? Your logic doesn't follow at all. It's clear you have little understanding of the various ways in which Iran has waged war on its neighbours over decades. Them having a nuke would merely enable them to become far more bold in their covert and overt attempts to cleans the world of their enemies.
So signing treaties, negotiating, having mass inspections, economic cooperation -- this is nothing? As of 2015 the official policy of the US was reintegration of iran into the economic system; trump undid that briefly, but then adopted exactly the same policy until a month ago.
> why on Earth would you think they don't mean it?
It's disappoing how effectively people are propagandised into offensive action based on the words of foreign nations.
Look at what Regan said about the USSR and vice versa, rhetoric much more extreme. At the time people couldnt understand the incomprehensibly insane world-ending rhetoric. Now we have a coherent theory of why leaders do this -- which is that you want your enemies to believe you will engage in suicidal behaviour or your deterrence isnt effective.
Here iran has enough missiles to detroy israel, but if it uses enough of them, its quite likely israel would nuke iran. Israel is the roge state in the region who goes around trying to topple regeims, bomb embassies, etc. They are the nation everyone is trying to contain.
Iran's rhetroic, and it's amassing of arms is a containment strategy for israel. Israel needs to find it semi-plausible iran will attack, or else Iran is screwed -- because israel will attack.
Welome to the world of geopolitics, where defensive behaviour by other countries looks like offensive behaviour if you're poorly informed about the situation. It makes waging wars of aggression, like this one, trivially easy to engineer consent for. Oh well, its the US's own blood and treasure, go spend it if you wish.
I was referring to this current round of sabre rattling, but if you're referring to the JCPOA, I should inform you that Iran agreed to monitoring and verification, not only under strictly restricted grounds. The deal did not give inspectors the right to freely roam. Access to military sites remained contentious and largely off limits. Iran never gave access to Parchin, for example. This meant Iran was free to continue their nuclear weapons development program - though of course in secret.
Further, the JCPOA unlocked $100B in frozen assets which the brutal dictator Ayatollah Khamenei immediately stole and used to cement his position of power. The JCPOA also lifted oil sanctions which further enriched Khamenei to the tune of $10-30B per year.
The JCPOA was commonly regarded as impotent and symbolic at best, and quite harmful at worst.
> Look at what Regan said about the USSR and vice versa, rhetoric much more extreme.
They both meant it. This is a crucial fact from the cold war. The world really was minutes away from nuclear war. I highly recommend reading the account of Stanislav Petrov [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov], a Russian lieutenant colonel, who in 1983 narrowly avoided nuclear war by heroically refusing to report an apparent missile launch by the U.S. During this period the U.S. formally developed the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine which automated nuclear launches in the event that no one was left alive to retaliate.
You use an example of two deadly serious adversaries willing to destroy the world as an example of something we should not fear?
So one quite important feature of stabre-ratting systems is that you don't have regieme-change instability where "lower tier zealots" who have been propagandised their whole lives suddenly take power -- because they, like the public, may be unaware it was just for show.
You're just repeating decades of US propaganda to me. I know it all. This was just a TV show put on to defend the rise of two empires, the US and the USSR -- the claims about ideology, world-destruction, communism, capitalism, etc. are all propangada. The goal the entire time, of both nations, was to expand their spheres of influence to each other's borders and to contain one another.
Here, the near entirity of iran's foreign policy is -- just like that of the US, USSR (and many other nations) -- a containment strategy for an highly militarised adversary. If iran took any other approach, israel would have invaded far earlier.
Israel would be outnumbered, fighting on enemy soil, and the logistics and supply chain would be insanely difficult to put in place and protect.
So either their state goals are lies, or their strategy is a losing one, or they anticipate a ground invasion.
Either way, the choice before israel/us is lose-lose.
But of course, it's imperative we take death threats very seriously, so just you know, err.. we.. err.. dont have to... err. dunno.
Of course that sentence should be, "it's imperative we pretend to take death threats seriously so that israel's ability to dominate the middle east through wars of aggression is maintained, even if that comes at the cost of the blood and treasure of the US"
My point wasn't that their stated goals can be met without a ground invasion, it was that a ground invasion fought only by Israel will be extremely difficult for them to win, if not impossible.
I'm not sure what your point is about death threats, or what threats you're referring to. Trump has pretty directly threatened Khamenei. The threats I remember seeing from Iran are always vague and pointed mostly at a desire for the Israeli and US governments to die - though dangerous statements to make, I wouldn't consider those death threats.
Don't misread me here as defending Iran, both sides in a war are to blame and the history of this problem goes back decades.
However, if israel's goals are a lie -- the question is what they're hoping to achieve. Maybe they thought the US had the capacity to take out iran's nuclear capability and would use it, from the air; or would gamble on that. I'm doubtful.
Or they think they can ramp up the escalation ladder to a degree where the US is involved in a full-blown war that wrecks iran as a functional state. This makes most sense.
The combined defensive capability of western powers may be enough to protect israel during such a conflict, whilst the US/israel can wage a much more sustained offensive campaign.
Either way, going around bombing iran -- civilian areas, oil infrastructure, media companies -- has only one aim: escalation. They are trying to provoke iran into ever more escalatory responses.
One has to square israel's actions with what they could plausibly aim to achieve. Everything points towards climbing an escalation ladder towards a US-backed destruction of iran as a functional state.
This will, of course, cost the US greatly. However there's very little evidence israel has any regard for US blood or treasure.
The Iraniansiranians, or at least the Iranian government, absolutely want the US and Israeli governments to fall, but when have they called for genocide?
Google all the times the US leaders have threatened annihilation against foreign nations, threats vastly more credible as a global superpower.
One should never take words very seriously in geopolitics. They are 2/3rds designed for domestic populations, to propagandize them (esp. in democracies, which must lie to their publics), and 1/3rds lies for the other side.
Serious analysers of geopoltical strategy are only concerned with actions, capabilities and growing capabilities. And they are esp. uninterested in domestic propaganda.
Everyone in the US elite is extremely well-aware of this; by pointing to iranian rhetoric now they are just propagandizing american audiences to support a war of aggression which is, largely, against the interests of the US population.
* "Israel must be wiped off the map." -President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
* "The Zionist regime will perish in the not-so-far future." -Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
* "Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map." -General Hossein Salami
They have been clear and consistent in their intent. Whether it be rhetoric or their continued funding and training of various terrorist groups in the region and globally.
Lastly, I find the argument derisive and infantilising that they don't really mean "death" when they say "death to America/Israel/the West". We all understand what the word "death" means.
That said, "organic" hatred towards the US is much more common in the Arab world than in Iran. Smarter people who live under totalitarian regimes tend to become distrustful of the message that the regime goons are relentlessly pushing, and if that message is "Death to America", the underground reaction will be "America must be cool if the idiots up there hate it so much".
I saw the same with my own eyes in late-stage Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Regime propaganda is one thing, its effect on the people another. It usually works much less than expected.
Just as Netanyahu‘s actions do not represent all Israelis, so the Iranian government does not represent all Iranians.
And what is the actual percentage of the population you're implicating here? 5% vs 50% could make a huge difference.
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
Are you aware that Iran approved of US invasion of Iraq in the Gulf War? It even allowed the use of it's air space.
Are you aware that Iran was the only country excluded from the Madrid peace talks of 1991 between Israel and Palestine? To counter this exclusion, Iran strengthened it's ties with Hamas and Hizbollah.
Iran is not some insane theocracy seeking of everyone's destruction. The regime is bad for the people, but self-interested just as any other, and benefits very little from full exclusion.
The prior comment I was replying to implied that the Iranians couldn't have been more diplomatic than they already have been.
That's simply untrue and ignores much of the rhetoric coming out from the Iranian government related to Israel and the US. More importantly, it ignores Iran's involvement with a handful of non-state militant groups in the region.
That's completely unfair to Iran. They had IAEA inspectors in their country and they were negotiating with the US (a nation who has put crippling sanctions on them).
Then a country that doesn't have IAEA inspectors bombed them, killing the people that very people who were negotiating with the US. Their message since than has been reasonable; "we won't negotiate while Israel is attacking us".
How much more diplomatic would you like them to be? They can't just roll over and take it, or they'll be finished.
I don't know maybe just start by not swearing that your neighbor must be destroyed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
But, if you were near to a country that was busily invading neighbours, run by religious zealots, a huge military had a history of using allies to attack you and is obviously illegally playing with nuclear bombs what would you do?
The problem is, that describes both iran and israel.
"Marg Bar <noun" appears to a ritualistic phrase, meaning 'down with':
https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/69301/what-do-t...
Here they are saying "Death to Khamenei" over power outages:
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/2021-07-06/ty-...
Here's a story of a taxi driver saying "Death to traffic":
https://blog.ricksteves.com/blog/death-to-israel-death-to-tr...
It's also worth pointing out that wanting Israel (the state) destroyed is not the same thing as wanting everyone who lives there to die. I'm glad the Third Reich was destroyed, I'm also glad the German people survived it.
Hezbollah.
Calling for death to America, speaking of desires for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, funding non-state militant actors in the region, etc are all acts that inflame and go counter to the diplomacy they were otherwise taking part in.
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/90870/11473
Apparently also Belgium , Italy, Turkey, Germany have the same type.
What I had in mind are nukes under the jurisdiction of a country (such as France or UK in Europe)
When Trump dumped his support for NATO in Europe, everyone was looking at France to shield them and deter attacks. I was wondering if other EU countries were reasonably close to building a bomb and I found this question.
You could just as easily say that doing regime change in a country will make them hate you, or that backing out of deals will make things worse, or that Israel can shape US policy at their own whims.
Yes, Iran had a stupid nuclear strategy. But that is only a minor part of this story.
Never heard of Wills? Whet your appetite with his masterpiece and best work (in my humble opinion): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29435.Nixon_Agonistes
We got very good at gray area nonsense. The Korean War is not a war, it's a conflict. The Vietnam War is not a war, it's an engagement. We have police actions, "peacekeeping" operations, and a hundred other things...but not "wars".
We have the "global war on terror" and the accompanying Authorization for the Use of Military Force, created in the wake of 9/11 and still in effect today.
Congressional approval of military action is fundamentally dead.
That said this particular bug for starting wars without congress has been exploited for decades with no patches in site
> Gödel's Loophole is a supposed "inner contradiction" in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gödel postulated in 1947. The loophole would permit America's republican structure to be legally turned into a dictatorship.
I’m glad that trump has returned us to a world where quotes from the 5th century bc seem like commentary on current affairs, since it means that all my time learning about power dynamics in political systems during antiquity is now completely relevant to dealing with current events, rather than a giant waste of time.
So it seems he's allowed to do this? It's still within 48 hours, so he has time to officially "notify" Congress, if he hasn't done so already. And since this was an aerial bombing, no armed forces remain there, so the 60-day bit is irrelevant.
Ukrainian sources still insist on calling them "Shaheds": https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/06/4/7515633/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/29/russia-iran-...
As concerns global stability a single precision strike from an untouchable platform with zero marginal increase in obligations on strained naval assets is basically the best case scenario. If we had dropped a bomb, took a picture in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, and gone back to playing chess with peer adversaries in any conflict since the Korean War it would have been the smart move. The United States military is designed to protect global trade and win high intensity conflicts against peer adversaries and be seen preparing for it as a deterrant. It does this job extremely well. It was not designed for assymetrical quagmires with no possible palatable exit strategy.
Likud may be willing to fight Iran to the last American, but I'd rather we didn't.
And the Trump Administration understands that we can't defend them both at a cost the public will accept. I think. Even MAGA diehards are like 70% opposed to another quagmire in the Middle East even if Trump endorses like a downticket primary radical.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/rwtcd.htm
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/j.ctt6wpgvg
"CHAPTER FIVE Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike"
Israel did most of the dirty work, US just came in to drive the final nail.
Like what? Declare a fatwa against them?
When you answer, please provide sources for your claims. I'll be eagerly awaiting your response.
https://www.memri.org/tv/iran-supreme-leader-ayatollah-ali-k...
> SAVAK was established in 1967 with help from both the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.
> All observers to trials since 1965 have reported allegations of torture which have been made by defendants and have expressed their own conviction that prisoners are tortured for the purpose of obtaining confessions. Alleged methods of torture include whipping and beating, electric shocks, the extraction of nails and teeth, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape.
Good luck convincing Iranians that they should welcome your kind into their country for any reason ever again.
Even more people would be relieved if trump bombed israel's nuclear facilities. But that doesn't make it right or justified.
Do you really want military attacks based on popularity or feelings? I don't think israel would enjoy living in such a world.
You know, none of this would have happened if Hamas didn't attack Israel on Oct 7. Iran should know. They paid for it.
If Iran had a nuke, they are crazy enough to use it by slipping it to their cells.
"If someone says they are going to kill you, believe them."
Iran: Death to Israel Iran: Death to America Hamas: Death to Israel Hamas: Death to America
So, hugs and pallets of cash? ...or you destroy their ability to kill a million of your civilians.
If their enrichment wasn't for weapons-development, why was it being done in a hardened under-ground bunker?
In 2023, unannounced inspections uncovered uranium particles enriched near weapons-grade. The so-called agreement was toilet paper to the terrorist state.
Well, the Democrats had a very good plan to deal with this: diplomacy. They agreed a deal where Iran agreed not to build nuclear weapons, and in exchange they removed sanctions on Iran. A win-win scenario for everyone (except Bibi). Trump then - completely inexplicably - decided that he could do better at negotiating a deal, ripped up Obama's one, and then decided to... plunge the Middle East into chaos.
> You know, none of this would have happened if Hamas didn't attack Israel on Oct 7. Iran should know. They paid for it.
Surely the man who decided it was a good idea to alllow Qatar to give Hamas lots of money is at least partially to blame? [1] Or perhaps the person who decided to advocate to the US government that they should sell weapons to Iran [2]
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... [2]: https://www.ft.com/content/8d75baf6-6756-4d52-a412-bc90bbbde...
Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the UAE, Egypt, etc all supported us.
I promise you that the boots on the ground of the rest of the nations listed by the other person here is far more important here than strongly worded letters by the aging bureaucracy that governs the EU.
Have you seen the bureaucracy currently running the US government? Makes the EU look pretty sane and well-rounded in comparison.
They were enriching uranium near weapons-grade levels. What more evidence do you need without seeing an actual assembled nuclear weapon?
A nuclear armed Iran would quickly lead much of the middle east to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran: in that part of the world, Iran is considered a very serious enemy.
Put another way: if you want to call it appeasement, fine, it has worked for a long time. On the other hand, "peace via war" has a terrible track record.
And there's the answer: on the world stage, you’d better be close friends with someone who has nukes, have your own, or be forced into a client state.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
Yes. Do not proliferate nuclear weapons. It’s not a big ask.
> you’d better be close friends with someone who has nukes
This is a completely acceptable and reasonable solution. It is how most of Europe operates.
It's a very big ask to not proliferate nuclear weapons, because nukes correlate with sovereignty. You didn’t address that point at all.
> This is a completely acceptable and reasonable solution. It is how most of Europe operates.
US friendship in the case of Iran means a puppet ruler (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran). And now Europe is in the process of decoupling itself from the US. Not to mention how the US completely dropped support for Ukraine. Turns out relying on an "ally" for defense like this is not such a great idea.
Israel also understands this, and so has multiple nukes in its arsenal. Why did Israel "simply" not proliferate nuclear weapons even when it enjoyed the protection and support of the US?
Given the track record in the region and the relationships involved, not getting a nuke seamless will lead to getting bombed with almost 100% certainty over a long enough period.
If they botch the quiet part, they'll almost certainly get bombed in the short term, which may or may not lead to the end of the project. But then will almost certain prevent getting bombed more in the future.
The US clearly does not believe they have operational nukes, or we would not have bombed them today. The actions undermine the official statements.
Put in realpolitik: would it be worth the US spending an Iraq War's expenditure of lives and $3 trillion to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon?
Why?
What makes this moment the place where the working approach of the last half-century simply cannot work another day?
The question is only, did they have the means to, and was there an indication they were? The answer is yes. They were enriching uranium at levels that go beyond anything non-nefarious. Their lead nuclear scientists were going to be meeting with their ballistic missile scientists (according to the dossier.)
On would it be worth it: nuclear proliferation is probably the most dangerous existential threat that humanity faces that is completely preventable. Iran is the most destabilizing country in the region and the cascade of nuclear proliferation that would occur if they succeeded would be a nightmare. That is easily worth $3T.
Nonproliferation via war is not a viable approach.
This reminds me to read more on the game theory aspect of nuclear states. But I do find it fascinating that no nuclear-armed states have ever been in a shooting war. Interesting to speculate whether the Middle East could have seen less bloodshed over the decades if all the players had been armed since near the beginning of the nuclear age.
It is not safer for more states to have nukes simply because it introduces more variables that are hard or impossible to control.
And accidents/mistakes/miscommunications account for most (all?) of our closest calls with nukes.
But it is also clear that enforcement of nonproliferation without similarly muscular enforcement of sovereignty in general creates a huge incentive for proliferation.
If we truly want nonproliferation, it simply follows that powerful nations must stop actions like the Russian conquest in Ukraine and whatever Israel is doing in Iran. Every government at base has an incentive to do everything possible keep bombs from falling on its cities, and a demonstrated nuclear capability is the only proven way to do that in a regime where nuclear powers are allowed to act with impunity.
Maybe we are detracting from some regional terrorism at the margins while increasing incentives for nuclear proliferation. I don’t think that’s a smart trade off, but that’s where we are headed.
You misspelled Israel, and a reminder that Israel is the only nation in the region with multiple nuclear warheads.
https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/06/israel-iran-w...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jdxxVxtHK2M
Copy and paste this nonsense argument for Iraq 3 trillion dollars ago.
A nuclear armed Iran - and remember that in vast swathes of the middle east, Iran is considered a very dangerous enemy - would lead to the rest of the middle east rapidly pursuing their own nuclear weapons.
Last night I tried to explain to my MIL that Iran did not do 9/11 (after she claimed this was finally payback for that). She responded that I was wrong because I listen to the liberal media. It was like a cartoon, I felt like a crazy person. she was so convinced that if Iran got nuclear weapons they would immediately use them on US soil. When I pointed out that would be suicide for them, and accomplish absolutely nothing, she said they aren’t rational, they just want to end the world.
Her only news source is Fox, so that must be who’s peddling this nonsense.
There’s an optimist in me that says, maybe by some small miracle that given enough time in a cold-ish war current Iranian regime will get replaced by something democratic and stable. Probably a pipe dream the way things are going, but not impossible.
If the comparison with how we treat hostile forces with nuclear weapons wasn’t more stark. N. Korea is basically left alone, their leader praised. Libya gives up nukes and then the state falls in on itself.
This is proving to any state that nuclear arms are really the only protection. The world is less safe, and the next generation of young men like me (20 years ago) are about to be thrown into the meat grinder, sent by a ruling class that doesn’t even answer to the people anymore.
We’ve really lost our way.
Reminder, a recent survey found 16% American supported an offensive strike against Iran.[1]
[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/06/19/israel-iran-war-americans-p...
Iran is considered a dangerous enemy in much of the middle east. A nuclear armed Iran would quickly lead to nuclear proliferation throughout the middle east. No one wants an Iran with nukes.
Then both kinds require the same protection, and protection can't be used to distinguish between them.
"She's obviously a witch, because she's been living deep in the forest all suspicious-like ever since we burned down her cursed house."
> Credible deterrent against stuff like this?
You mean the credible deterrent is moving towards a nuke?
Look I dgaf about what Iran was doing, there is no wool over my eyes about what that state is capable of. I saw the IEDs with copper cones used to kill and maim my friends, they almost certainly came from Iran.
What I care about is: congress declares war, not the executive. The people should decide, and we just stepped 10 steps closer to the monarchy we tried to depose 250 years ago.
2024 Trump is using the power of the executive in ways even more grotesquely than 2016 Trump.
Countries without nukes get victimized by countries with nukes. If you haven't noticed this pattern yet, there's not much hope for you.
I visited Nagasaki/Hiroshima a few years ago, at the end of both memorials there are celebrations of NPTs and denuclearization efforts with veneers of 90's nostalgia - as if the job were done. How wrong we all were, today 2 non-NPT nuclear powers bombed a NPT non-nuclear power to prevent imaginary WMD Nukes, triggering a possible regional conflict that will kill millions. The only country that shouldn't have nukes is America - they dropped 2 for vibes because the Nazis already surrendered and they wanted to try out their new toy. IL\US project their genocidal tendencies onto others then claim preemptive strikes. Both countries a threat to world peace. It's clear now the only way these two countries leave you alone is if you have a nuke. Any sovereign logical leader will now pursue them. IL/US have made the world a much more dangerous place just because they want to continue the holocaust of Gaza.
Shame.
Reality doesn’t work like that. Netanyahu may indeed be a war criminal. That doesn’t make Iran the good guy and it doesn’t mean their stonewalling was not likely shielding the development of an offensive nuclear capability.
America’s sole responsibility is in its protection and the deterrence of these programs, regardless of who you have to hitch your wagon to. I really wish peace with Iran were possible. I see no evidence they’re interested in that peace.
Gulf War -> US invasion of Iraq = 12 years
US invasion of Iraq -> USA, Iran & Israel = 22 years
Looks like it's time for USA to feed a new generation of grunts into the PTSD grinder again.
Why would anyone sign up for military service after dump has personally pissed in their faces?
Now you just release act of great benefits for those who sign and you get them onboard in a blink of an eye.
Same with the Russian mil conscripts in Ukraine.
Same with the crusade in mid ages.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CsJPrHcaBs
Much of the middle east considers Iran to be a very significant enemy. A nuclear armed Iran would lead to much of the rest of the middle east rapidly pursuing their own nuclear weapons programs.
But people might think it sounds a bit silly, when Iran have been 'months' to 'a year' away from nuclear weapons for thirty years [0].
Especially when the IAEA themselves say there is zero proof that Iran have made any effort to obtain nuclear weapons [1].
Do you have any evidence for this? Any at all?? ... If so, wouldn't it be smart to share it the next time you make these claims in defense of acts of war?
9 days ago, Israel assassinated Iran's lead nuclear negotiator, along with 9 scientists [2]. They didn't offer any evidence for doing this, just claimed it was necessary. If you have access to any genuine evidence, it would be great to see it. And if you don't - consider not presenting you claims as fact ~40 times in a single post.
0 - https://www.cnbctv18.com/world/for-3-decades-israeli-pm-neta...
1 - https://truthout.org/articles/iaea-head-we-did-not-have-any-...
2 - https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-kills-ali-shamkhani
There are solutions other than war to nonproliferation.
Note - no boots on the ground wouldn't be a big limitation because in case of say ethnic violence, with Azerbaijani and Persian being the largest groups, or even just great social chaos, Turkey and Azerbaijan, are, as far as i understand, ready to bring their armies into the Iran's Azerbaijani populated provinces, which would leave Persians, who are many don't like that "Arab's Islam", in their provinces to their own devices, probably even restoring the monarchy with the Shah's son, which again would be a good outcome here.
I expect a full no-fly zone enforcement, and with that the regime's domestic authority and power will quickly go down the drain.
Ultimately the choice of whether or not Iran gets to build a nuclear bomb is not up to them, and they're finding that out now.
You can always stop building nuclear weapons at any time and change course. But they chose not to, and suffered the consequences. Whose fault is that?
- Israel bombed an Iranian Embassy
- Iran counterstruck Israel but relatively restrained and with warning
- Israel bombed several high ranking Iranians, especially those involved with the nuclear program
- Iran counterstruck Israel.
None of it had that much to do with America.
Does anyone think that situation resolved well? If we were able to go back in time, would we choose diplomacy again, knowing it would fail?
Maybe that's why NK has nukes. They US declared war on them and then threatened them with nuclear weapons to prevent North Korea from winning the war.
I don't think we've seen the resolution of that situation. We will one day, and I think the chances of it being a good outcome are pretty slim. I'm very much against Iran having nuclear weapons. I just hope we don't get dragged into a long war which will explode our national debt and potentially lead to a sovereign debt crisis.
There was never really any other option than "ask nicely to not do that", and maybe try some covert sabotage here and there. Everyone knew that and everyone knew that everyone knew.
In Iran the situation is different, because everyone knows that they don't have any such deterrent and they will lose in any real shooting war, with fairly little options to meaningfully fight back. There is a real inventive to actual pursue diplomacy for Iran which didn't exist in North-Korea.
Also the North-Korean regime and population is of quite a different nature than Iran. By and large, the North-Korean regime just wants to be left alone and is quite isolationist. This also doesn't really apply to Iran.
What makes it OK specifically for the US to do this? There is an entire international framework to deal with non proliferation. Bombing another country on the other side of the world because you can is not that.
The framework to deal with non-proliferation depends on the states involved voluntarily participating in the framework. Iran was not doing so.
There are numerous countries that enjoy paranuclear status who have had no problem not lying to the IAEA.
You cannot place blame for this outcome on anyone other than Iran, they made the move entirely of their own volition. Once you open the door for consequence, you don't get to choose how it is handed out.
Ultima ratio regum.
As for international frameworks, how should the Non-Proliferation Treaty be enforced? If a country violates it then what should the consequences be?
https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/npt/
> Listen, don't bring up the bullshit framework everyone used to get into the Iraq war.
Ridiculous comparison. No one's talking about a ground invasion here.
You’re arguing for a greater number of uncontrollable parameters governing the world’s most deadly weapons. I can’t think of a more idiotic position to take. And the “nothing bad has happened yet” belief system is just insane. Stanislav Petrov? Able Archer 83? Read a book man.
How many times has the world’s most capable military accidentally almost detonated a nuclear bomb?
Iran is an objectively bad actor when it comes to nuclear weapons. They created the problem voluntarily, of their own volition. What comes after is not up to them.
Iran, by the way, broke the IAEA agreement. Fordo was built illegally, without disclosure to the IAEA.
https://govfacts.org/explainer/declaration-of-war-vs-authori...
The data is that Iran has some weapons research, and have/had about 400kg of 60% enriched Uranium (no civilian use), an higher amount of lower grade enriched Uranium, and a certain number of centrifuges for enrichment.
The interpretation bit is regarding what's called 'weaponization' (aka taking all the materials and converting them to a bomg):
A modern bomb would use >90% (preferably >95%) Uranium and an implosion mechanism and be light and small enough to put on a common ballistic missile. While getting to 90% would have been easy for them (at one time they 'accidentally' enriched to 88%), they haven't done it yet, and it isn't entirely clear how close they are on miniaturization.
A hacky bomb could use a lower grade of Uranium (60% would barely do if they pooled all of it), be much heavier (it comes with the lower grade), possibly use a simpler gun-type mechanism, and would have to be delivered with some custom mechanism.
So 'weapons grade' could mean '90% and above', or it could mean 'enriched to a level that has no use apart from building weapons'. 'Distance to a bomb' could mean 'distance from what can be easily delivered' or 'distance from any fissile explosive'.
for totally civilian purposes...
IMHO the Israeli policy of punching everyone so hard they're reeling is a massive mistake for Israel in the long term. It works great short-term, but 50 years? 100 years? Who knows what the world will look like then, and being surrounded by enemies is not going to work well when you no longer have your fancy US-backed missile shields and whatnot. The best long-term bet is for normalised relationship with its neighbours, and every time something like this happens that gets set back 20 years at least.
Then again, they had already given up on that with how it treated the Palestinians both in Gaza and West-Bank...
This doesn't mean military action is never an option under any circumstances, but no nation can perpetuate hostilities forever. Whether it's 50, 100, or 200 years: this has a massive risk of coming back to bite Israel hard.
Hope they're building other friendships in the region, I don't see the unquestioning US patronage lasting much longer.
Chuck Schumer still supports killing and maiming toddlers though.
America, the west, and many countries beyond the west, have been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades.
Iran is detested in much of the middle east. If they get nukes, the rest of the middle east will feel compelled to quickly pursue their own nuclear weapons programs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Shayrat_missile_strike
While you are correct it wasn’t a war, but neither is this technically.
1/17/12: "@BarackObama will attack Iran in order to get re-elected."
9/16/13: "I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order save face!"
11/10/13: "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly - not skilled!"
"If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace. I am peace." - Presidential debate, 2024
If you voted for Trump, you voted precisely for this. Every accusation from him is either a confession in disguise or an unfulfilled wish.
It's not random.
He can just have wanted to punish Iran or something without it being a full blown plan. Trump assassinated an Iranian general during his first term [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasem_Soleimani
There are exceptions -- birtherism comes to mind -- but that's what they are, exceptions. In general, though, accusations from Republicans reliably reflect things they are either already doing, planning to do, or wish they could get away with.
Maybe Trump will claim the airstrikes were just a joke, like he does when he tells his supporters to use violence towards other Americans. Otherwise, the United States is definitely, unambiguously at war with Iran.
watch as the US is now dragged into 10-20 years of war in the middle east again.
Hopefully the ensuing economic meltdown will sour enough Americans before too many people are killed, but who knows.
Generally, Any prominent pro-Israel republican if they post anything pro-war will have hundreds of negative replies.
It is incredibly depressing to see people constantly falling into the trap that their political opposition are dumb / brainwashed.
I'd love to be wrong here, but I don't think I am.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/survey-results...
> Do you approve or disapprove of the U.S. bombing nuclear sites in Iran?
Republicans say:
Also his base are a different group of people from Republicans, they are often a subset of Republicans.
You can go on Twitter, Youtube or any comment section and they are all saying "MAGA is dead", "I didn't vote for this" or some sort of signalling they are against a war with Iran.
Trump's base have been consistently against wars in the middle-east and him being too close to Israel has been a consistent criticism of Trump from way back in 2016/2017. So his supporters have been consistent about this for almost a decade. So I don't think your assessment is correct at all.
It been almost a decade now since Trump has entered politics and there has been one thing that been consistent throughout this period. That is the inability for otherwise intelligent people to state the beliefs of Trump's supporters accurately.
But the pattern I've seen is that it doesn't matter whether his supporters have consistently been against something, because they'll change their opinion once Trump actually does that thing. They start off by levying some criticisms, but quickly change over the coming days.
We'll see soon enough who is right. My prediction is: in one week, there'll be broad support in his base for the bombing. I'm sure enough of it that I'd be willing to bet money on it, and I'll gladly come back here and admit that I was wrong should things not turn out how I expect them to.
I don't believe you. You went for the old "they are all brainwashed" routine, specifically after I complained about people doing that. Which tells me you have bought into partisan politics.
> But the pattern I've seen is that it doesn't matter whether his supporters have consistently been against something, because they'll change their opinion once Trump actually does that thing. They start off by levying some criticisms, but quickly change over the coming days.
No they haven't. They've consistently been against his supporting of the COVID Vaccine (to the point where Trump doesn't mention it anymore), Against wars in the middle-east.
The pro-Trump people were complaining about his bombing of the Syrian Airfield back in 2017. That was spun heavily by the media at the time.
You consistently keep claiming this to be a truism but it isn't true at all. This is wholly disingenuous or you don't know what you are talking about.
> We'll see soon enough who is right. My prediction is: in one week, there'll be broad support in his base for the bombing. I'm sure enough of it that I'd be willing to bet money on it, and I'll gladly come back here and admit that I was wrong should things not turn out how I expect them to.
Even if you were wrong, I suspect that you will point to some AstroTurf'd poll and declare victory.
I'm doing that "routine" because it's what I've been seeing time and time again over the last years. I keep seeing lines drawn in the sand, those lines being stepped over, and everybody suddenly just accepting it and calling everyone who still keeps to those lines "RINOs" until they fully disappear.
But if you can't extend this much good faith to me, we have nothing to discuss. Good day.
How is it possible that a foreign leader, Netanyahu ( who has lied in the past to get us to attack iraq ), can get Trump to bomb Iran and nobody, especially in the media, bats an eye.
The media is focused on the bombing, but shouldn't the focus be on foreign control over much of the US government? After years of soul searching over the iraq fiasco and the lies can we still be in this position again?
Israel exists in the way that it does and does what it does because we allow it to. It is a toolf our imperial interests, not the other way around. To argue otherwise absolves us of our responsibility and can often descend into antisemitism (which I oppose).
We have described Israel as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in a region we want to destabilize becuase it has resources that are important to us.
Oh and this is uniparty too. Don't kid yourselves if you think things would be different if the Democrats were in power. It would not. There is universal agreement on US foreign policy across both parties. The events in Gaza began under a Democratic president who did absolutely nothing to rein Israel in where he could've ended it with a phone call.
There is no opposition to what Israel is doing. Even now, Democratic leaders in Congress aren't complaining about what the president is doing and has done. They're complaining that they weren't consulted. And not to oppose it but to have the opportunity to express their support.
And yes, the media is absolutely complicit in what's going on too.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44341958
Here's the interesting wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit
(It will be the first time a GBU-57A/B has been used in war, which is interesting)
They needed troops on the ground. Israel was going to do this.
It's possible they have just collapsed the entrances.
Trumps comments - https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump You have a loop, @Osint613 reposted Trump as "Fordow is gone" which Trump reposted. Neither of them have any idea.
(Natanz, Isfahan were already hit and damaged by Israel, the US didn't bother to bunker bust them, it was Tomahawks from subs )
3D model of Fordow - https://x.com/TheIntelLab/status/1398716540485308417
You need a tactical nuke to destroy Fordow, but the USA considers tactical the same as strategic, so it would be very unlikely. Russia could, since they put tactical in a different category.
All the Middle East calamities have begun with targeted and limited operations. Not believable anymore.
The point is those arguments were often brought up by people justifying why they voted for Trump instead of prioritizing other issues, as if the guy represented some kind of reform rather than just a more base and brazen looter.
If US hopes to not be involved in it, it will be up for the surprise.
I think I know what statement you are referring to and it wasn't an endorsement of war.
Recognising someone for doing something well even if it is amoral/immoral, isn't an endorsement of person or action.
e.g.
I don't like George Galloway or how he operates as a politician, nor do I like his politics, or his policies. I personally think that he is a scumbag.
However he is a very effective politician and his strategies, tactics and his communication skills are second to none. He is very good at chewing out BBC presenters which is pure Schadenfreude.
> He was just generally critical of anything the US did, because fundamentally he hates our country
You are making a similar mistake. Being critical of your own country doesn't mean that you hate it.
I live England. I am English. I love England. Do I hate a lot of things about my country currently? yes I do. Do I hate the country? no I don't (mostly).
That's just one touchpoint though. There's a larger but handwavier argument about how Trump's whole technique is to engage in negative-sum destructive aggression, causing pain to other parties so they capitulate and "make a deal". War is entirely on-brand for him.
Really though we should probably be relieved that he turned his focus to a foreign enemy rather than spending most of his energy escalating attacks against the State of California.
> Being critical of your own country doesn't mean that you hate it
Read the sentence right after the one you quoted. I most certainly understand good faith criticism! I'm a libertarian - I actually care about many of the issues currently being burnt on the bonfire of credibility by Trump and the fake "libertarians" that actually only care about their own "rights".
You are deliberately misunderstanding the point being made, while simultaneously making an argument for tone policing. It is quite tiresome.
I stated that George Galloway is a complete scumbag. I think he is utterly amoral. I can still praise his (quite frankly) amazing rhetorical ability that gets even someone like myself who dislikes him, to cheer for him. That is how good he is. Does that make me immoral for stating an obvious fact? no it doesn't. I suspect you know this though.
The exact same logic applies to Trump's statements about Putin.
> Really though we should probably be relieved that he turned his focus to a foreign enemy rather than spending most of his energy escalating attacks against the State of California.
Quelling actual riots and enforcing immigration law is not attacking a state. I don't want to get into an argument over this, because I know there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
I think the gangs, violent thugs and state governors that encourage law breaking (that what he was doing) should be crushed. I say this as someone that used to call themselves a Libertarian.
> Read the sentence right after the one you quoted.
I did. It doesn't negate what I said. Even if Trump criticism were made to tap into such a feeling, that doesn't mean they are incorrect, or that he hates the country.
Tony Blair said something to effect "You need to actually obtain power to be able to enact the change". That means manipulating the voter base. Every effective politician does this btw.
> I most certainly understand good faith criticism! I'm a libertarian - I actually care about many of the issues currently being burnt on the bonfire of credibility by Trump and the fake "libertarians" that actually only care about their own "rights".
Libertarians are just as bad as any other group in engaging in bad faith arguments.
As for the credibility of Libertarians, that was in tatters well before Trump. I used to call myself a Libertarian (a very lonely position in the UK). I realised that many of the people that claimed to be one had never read any of the foundational material and what Libertarianism meant was "I want to smoke weed". You just have to watch some of the convention footage of the Libertarian party conference (which as I understand was the third biggest party after the Dems/GOP in the US) to understand that what I am saying is 100% correct.
I suspect though that isn't want you referring to. I suspect you are lambasting the Libertarian Party under the Chairmanship of Angela McArdle and some of the other more Right-wing Libertarians associated with Trump. All I can say about her Chairmanship is she managed to get Ross Ulbricht freed, which makes her objectively more effective than most Libertarians.
Trump does not distance himself from Putin in this way - rather he compliments often, and then only occasionally backpedals when pressed. The sensible interpretation is that overall he supports Putin, and the occasional critical remark is just part of his signature contradictory word salad.
> Quelling actual riots and enforcing immigration law is not attacking a state
It is the job of the local and state governments to strike the balance between the right to protest and keeping order. The elected officials were handling that just fine - there was no "riot", especially not some kind of ongoing one not being handled by LAPD. Deputizing the national guard against the direction of the state governor to perform domestic enforcement duties is an attack on that state authority. It had the exact opposite effect of restoring order, resulting in a predictable escalation for a TV stunt.
But if you're drinking this level of fascist Kool-Aid, then there's really no point in continuing this discussion. I do have to wonder why you're so invested in American politics not even being American though. I'm guessing you're emboldened by not actually having to suffer the inevitable poor results of Trump's destructive bluster-and-back-down approach. Contrast with say, if you lived in Los Angeles.
(And sure, it's great that Ulbricht was freed. But I'm not going to be placated by one small bone from an overwhelmingly freedom-destroying fascist movement)
Yes you are doing exactly that. "Nuance" is a cop-out. The logic is precisely the same.
> Trump does not distance himself from Putin in this way - rather he compliments often, and then only occasionally backpedals when pressed. The sensible interpretation is that overall he supports Putin, and the occasional critical remark is just part of his signature contradictory word salad.
No that isn't the sensible interpretation. You are doing mental gymnastics.
> It is the job of the local and state governments to strike the balance between the right to protest and keeping order. The elected officials were handling that just fine - there was no "riot", especially not some kind of ongoing one not being handled by LAPD. Deputizing the national guard against the direction of the state governor to perform domestic enforcement duties is an attack on that state authority. It had the exact opposite effect of restoring order, resulting in a predictable escalation for a TV stunt.
Dude the footage can be found on Youtube of the riots. I also remember watching in real time with American friends over live streams of the riots in the summer of 2020. I forget which city it was (Minneapolis) but I saw this huge building collapse live. So please don't gaslight me that the local government was handling these things just fine. They weren't.
> But if you're drinking this level of fascist Kool-Aid,
No, I've barely looked at the news at all over the last month. The weather in the UK has been exceptionally nice and I've been spending my time cycling.
I have watched live-streams of riots and seen stores being looted in real time, guys burning cars etc. There is one guy that literally rides around the city on his electric motorbike thing and documents it that a friend and I were watching the other night.
Apparently I imagined all of the things that were captured on candid camera?
> then there's really no point in continuing this discussion. I do have to wonder why you're so invested in American politics not even being American though.
I am interested in American politics because I have many American friends that I speak to regularly. I have also Canadian friends. Most of them are actually left wing.
The reason I don't pay attention to Politics in the UK is very stale, boring, depressing and I know my vote is literally meaningless. Even people in my family that were very much "You must go out and vote" have told me in private that they no longer bother because all they get is more of the same. My father told me he has never voted because he knows whoever you vote for, you end up get shafted anyway.
> I'm guessing you're emboldened by not actually having to suffer the inevitable poor results of Trump's destructive bluster-and-back-down approach. Contrast with say, if you lived in Los Angeles.
I actually know someone that lives in Los Angeles and I talk to them about this very subject maybe a few days ago. They told me that if you live in certain parts of the city, you may never even know there were horrific problems in the other parts.
BTW. I live near Manchester and recently visited Cardiff. Both cities while much smaller are having similar problems to Los Angeles. There are a large number of drug addicts that are literally passed out on the streets, there are homeless people everywhere (my friend regularly has to walk over homeless people camping in his doorstep) and both cities are in a state of decay.
I've seen plenty of real time footage of Los Angeles and other American cities that have similar problems. Unfortunately the same thing is now happening in our cities.
The dumbest and/or most self-interested of many demographics, it turns out, were happy to be tricked!
There are a handful of users on HN who have domain experience or knowledge in policymaking due to professional adjacencies (IP Law, High Finance, Space/Defense Tech VC, etc) but get drowned out.
At tech? Maybe. At everything else? Not so much.
In recent years, that deal has been looking better every day. We are undoubtedly worse off today than we would be had Trump left the deal in place. This is a bad situation.
It also just as well could have been us making another deal to extend the time, but just because Obama's deal was "not good enough" this the outcome we want?
What kind of argument is that
https://apnews.com/united-states-government-fd4113419276444e...
It’s possible it would have been a complete failure. We will never know. What we do know for sure is that we have had fewer options for dealing with the situation since we pulled out of the deal and now we are at war.
Our country’s handling of Iran has been nothing short of a spectacular blunder. Two administrations have tried to negotiate out of the hole Trump got us into when he tore up the deal. The buffoon actually thought he would cancel the deal and make a better one. Now, after 20+ years of criticizing the Iraq war and campaigning three times on not starting new wars, he is the trigger man getting us into a new one when we are least prepared for it.
You can be assured that there will be a response. What it will be and for how long I don’t know. What I do know is that diplomacy is completely off the table. It’s possible we are dealing with the consequences of this for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_policy_of_exporting_the_Is...
Deals are tactical. They're not about shifting world views.
I'm not sure the US and Iran are really "at war right now". This is very different than Iraq. But I do agree intervention has risks. The problem is that no intervention also has risks. Take for example Obama's lack of appetite to intervene in Syria. Contrast to Turkey and Israel that effectively intervened recently in Syria and force a regime change that at least so far is more or less holding out.
It’s amazing what decades of propaganda has done to Western discourse. Now somehow bombing another country isn’t war.
The US has had many bombings of other countries without a full out war:
https://www.maurer.ca/USBombing.html
Most recent big example is Yemen. Would you say the US is at war right now with Yemen?
Was this already the start of this war? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis
I guess you could say that during the bombing campaign in Yemen until the ceasefire (and maybe now) they were at "war".
Were Israel and Iran "at war" when they exchanged blows a year ago?
What to you counts as “war”? When the countries fire back?
Something you would look back at and call "The US Iran War". I don't think the previous acts of violence, or the current one, between these two meets the mark yet. And it's not clear if this one will. Iran can't really do much right now and it's not clear whether the US will go a lot further here.
E.g. we probably aren't going to look back at the hostilities with Yemen and call them the "US-Yemen war" or the "US Houthis war" like we look at Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Or as Putin would put it, it's a special military operation (yeah yeah, that one is a war).
Curious about this. Are we not technically at war because they haven't retaliated yet?
Americans definitely believed we were at war with Japan immediately after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
There's is already a history of violence between Iran and the USA. Was that a war? When Iranian funded militias attacked American bases is that war?
Anyways, that's how I think about it.
You are going to have take a step back and convince me why I should care about US hegemonic interests in the region. Iran is it's own nation - I don't see why we should be "dealing" with them in the first place. If you really care about the profit margins of Aramco and ExxonMobil (the whole reason were in this mess in first place) you should lead with that so that others know why you care about what a sovereign country does.
Iran spends rather large amounts of money funding various groups that are adverse to US interests and operate well outside Iran’s borders. Pretending that Iran is its own country and can thus be ignored is not an effective policy.
1. This describes many countries that we haven't invaded that I'm not sure you are being serious.
2. You will need to be specific. Which US interests? The interests of Californians or of Saudi Aramaco?
3. America is propoganda giant number one, and China has seemed to come up just fine despite America spending hundreds of billions trying to convince the world the communists in China are eating dirt.
I'm not convinced that this is a good use time or money for the American tax payer. I'm fully convinced American hegomonic decline is fully self-inflected and the trillions wasted in Afghanistan did more to hurt American than any backwards goat farmer in the middle east could ever accomplish.
I'm not an American but my argument would be that a free and stable world is better for the US.
A regime like Iran's that has killed Americans, is openly calling the US "The Great Satan", is supporting militias in places like Iraq that attack Americans. That funds, supports and trains organizations the US considers terrorist organizations. Is abusing its own citizenry and actively seeks to export its values to other countries. Is supplying weapons to Russia for attacking Ukraine. This sort of regime can't just do whatever it wants under the label of "its own nation" since what its doing impacts others.
The US is the big superpower of the "west" and the "free world". For the most part it is its deterrence against Russia and China that is standing in the way of those doing whatever they want (e.g. China taking Taiwan by force). I don't think the world would be a better place if the US just stands back.
All that said, intervention, and use of force, needs to be sensible/reasonable/calculated. It's not easy to say where this is going. But it's also not easy to say where it would have gone otherwise. I can also understand Americans not having an appetite for any of this after Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. But to contrast that I think failure to intervene in the Arab Spring led to pretty bad consequences, prolonged civil wars, a refugee crisis, etc. So perhaps some intervention and support would have helped. Also the US withdrawal and lack of support to democracy in Russia were probably factors in the reversal of that country back to where it is today.
Anyways, that's my very long opinion on this topic. But I can totally understand Americans not wanting any part of this. But don't think that you can just hide, things that happen in the world impact you.
You aren't arguing for a free and stable world. You are arguing for a total hegemonic power for US interests - and thats my point. You are taking the position of "this is what is good for US companies and interests" and working backwards from there.
It's remarkable you use the "were stopping China from doing whatever they want", but you don't stop and think that there are other people who have legitimate concerns in stopping the US from doing what they want. Replace China with the US and Taiwan with Palestine. Aren't we doing to Palestine what you claim we should stop China from doing to Taiwan? At the very least it comes across hypocritical to claim you are in it for a "free and stable world" when that actually means "the US should get to invade whoever it wants".
Furthermore, the same things you say about Iran, you could argue about North Korea. North Korea has killed Americans, they have an entire month dedicated to hating America (it starts next month!) and openly funds corporate espionage attacks that drains billions from Americans. Despite that do you honestly believe, that the world would be safer if we started dropping GBU-43s on North Korean children? Honestly answer me that.
Despite what you can say about North Korean regime - don't you believe a North Korea, with Nukes mind you, is far more preferable than the alternative? Where America is dropping bombs on North Korean every 5 years? Which do you think is actually better?
Why does North Korea - who again, has done all the same, and more, than Iran get a pass from the military industrial complex? Isn't North Korea clearly the bigger threat when it comes to peace as defined by the parameters you laid out? Once you interrogate this line of thinking it makes 0 sense - and anyone who thinks candidly realizes the contradiction: ironically, once our so called "enemies" have nukes, children stop being vaporized by bombs.
Japan kinda went through the same problem in 80s/90s, but from a different angle. The problem is, US can't pull the same on China as it did with Japan.
They have always been emboldened.
They didn't steal "secrets", but they almost certainly were covertly supplied with US nuclear material with the tacit approval of the CIA.
As for the claim about killing US sailors, here's GDF's vid on the attack against the USS Liberty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfABflKvFzk
Gaza happened under Biden's watch, and continued under Trump.
This is the first time the lie has worked to this extent.
Death to America is a great motto, but that's all it really is, they sadly lack the capability to follow through with it. With or without these latest strikes.
Maybe Harris wouldn't have gone this far, but the democrats were happy to carry water for Israel for a long time.
I'd argue their unflinching support was also a key to priming the American public for this moment.
Fully and unquestioningly supporting whatever Israel does is practically a requirement for all American politicians.
There no evidence to support that. US policy has been to fully support Isreal, full stop. At least under Biden there was talk of suspending arms supplies due to Gaza, Trump just wants a shot at that beach front real estate. Not comparable at all.
I'm also no fan of war or playing world police. I don't know whether destroying Iranian nuclear sites was ultimately the right or wrong decision. But there is clearly enough debate here in the rest of the comments that it's not obviously the wrong option. Even a broken clock can be right twice a day.
In any case, it certainly doesn't weigh towards "not belligerent". I'm no Trump supporter or apologist, I just don't see how one can claim that this action changes the calculus for Russia and China. Maybe if he really had fully abandoned Ukraine then yes. But he's been happy to attack Yemen and Iran (and possibly Greenland for that matter) so why would China think they are immune? I suspect he also harbors more racism towards China than Russia.
I'm being a bit mean I suppose, it's not actually stupidity. It's naivety and fierce propaganda campaigns. Everyone longs for a simpler time and the domestic economic struggles of the US are plain.
I've watched many people deteriorate mentally and their are many routes. Biden was clearly the "i misplace stuff" route, not "i will now attack an ally".
He definitely shouldn't have been allowed to run for president again but Trump is far more belligerent. I'm not even necessarily opposed to his actions in Iran. But he's now verbally, fiscally, or actually attacked several allies and enemies. He'll likely attack more. I think it's fine to argue for or against his actions. But it's silly to equate the scale of his actions, or risk of mental deterioration, with Biden. The stakes are much higher, the strong allies and enemies are all making reactive bold moves in response. Things are moving fast now.
If anything, a better standpoint is: Illogical and cavalier use of deadly force should scare our enemies, because it makes expression of our nation's military power more unpredictable. If China invades Taiwan; Trump might just blow up the Three Gorges Dam. Other Presidents might move with care, logic, and intrinsic sanctity for human life; Trump doesn't.
How do you reconcile that with:
> scare our enemies (and they) might move with care, logic, and intrinsic sanctity for human life
US will be forced to join and millions of its citizen will die in WW3.
This is why the west has been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades.
There is just no much other places for people to run when shit hits fan.
But I’m also not sure that the situations are comparable. In the case of Ukraine which is probably most similar to Iran from an economic standpoint, had many refugees who were temporarily fleeing Russian aggression but planned to return to Ukraine. Iran, especially if/when it’s out from under sanctions has a more robust economy and geopolitical forces going for it, versus Libya or Syria, in my view.
Economy will matter only if there will be no fallout in Iran which is not guaranteed.
> Economy will matter only if there will be no fallout in Iran which is not guaranteed.
Sure it depends on what all happens, but my point was it is different than Syria or Libya in many aspects.
But policies directly influence people's motivation to become illegal migrants in a particular country.
Yeah man, nothing except 2000+ miles of the largest mountain ranges in the fucking world. Are you serious man?
“self inflicted”
(... no)
The west has been working to counter Iran's ongoing nuclear weapons program for decades.
Does not sound like Chomsky is saying "no, iran isn't a threat" to me.
But yeah, I do think history will remember this as one of the few good things Trump does.
Contemporary experience shows the probable outcome of regime change policy is a failed state that remains a hazard to its neighbors.
During the Civil War, Abolitionists mass-murdered slave owners by way of dueling them. The story of Cassius Marcellus Clay is littered with stories of brutally killing slave owners and we champion Abolitionists as righteous.
Killing men in personal duels is not comparable or relevant.
After such a violent effort, it is a foregone conclusion that the remaining cancer is mercilessly destroyed. If you don't, then all of the lives sacrificed for the cause are meaningless.
What the West has a problem with is reconciling the inescapable reality that true believers absolutely must be killed (for good reason).
There is nothing within the Western view that affords anything short of death for these people. This makes people very uncomfortable, but it's necessary if Western civilization is to continue.
The IDF has total air superiority. The regime has very little capabilities left at all.
In Lebanon the state is attempting to reassert itself. In Syria the rebels took control. But with no foreign boots on the ground, and no organized opposition ready to step in, what exactly is supposed to happen after the regime folds?
You really believe Trump would take meaningful action against Russia? He can even make a forceful statement, let alone act.
There is nothing ideological about this war, nobody seriously believes that. It's 100% power play
Purportedly 400 people just died… Was it because a sovereign country wants to have Nuclear power? Maybe? Maybe not? Was it because Israel already has Nukes? Who knows… But it’s not a simple end of story situation unless lives have no value.
When you hear these words you’re being sold an agenda.
Some developments in this area:
https://tvbrics.com/en/news/iran-presents-15-developments-in...
https://wanaen.com/iran-surpasses-70-locally-produced-radiop...
Israel has nothing against Iran. Before the Islamic revolution there were warm relations between the countries and the people. They are pretty distant geographically and until now have never fought a direct war. Iran has been actively attacking Israel via proxies for decades now and openly claims it wants to destroy it. Israel, at least to date, has shown that it can be trusted to use nuclear weapons as a pure deterrent.
I'd rather live in a world without nuclear weapons but I'm a lot more worried about Russia and Pakistan (e.g.).
By the way, we've seen what value security guarantees have to countries willing to give up nuclear deterrence in Ukraine. Not worth anything.
I think this framing is incorrect. It’s more like “Iran has helped these organizations fight Israel”.
It’s fairly obvious that Hamas and Hezbollah are not proxies - they arose not because of Irani funding but as a reaction to Israeli actions.
"America arms Israel to attack Lebannon and Palestine"
That's often spread by Jewish media, but I see no evidance for this. Iran's supreme leader has issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.
> Israel has nothing against Iran
Just like Israel has nothing against Palestinians?
> Israel, at least to date, has shown that it can be trusted to use nuclear weapons as a pure deterrent.
A genocidal state cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.
"The Hamas-led attacks against Israel on 7 October reflected their own independent calculations. Although they could not have happened without the provision of long-term Iranian support, the attacks likely came as an unwelcome surprise for Tehran, which over the last two months has avoided giving Palestinian groups full-throated support. Whether Hamas and PIJ remain tightly aligned with Iran, however, will depend on the outcome of the war in Gaza and wider dynamics in the Middle East’s fluctuating geopolitics."
Israel has really no history of any hostility towards Iran that predates their proxy wars on Israel. There is absolutely no rational reason or excuse for Iran to be attacking Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conf...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/09/...
> A genocidal state cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.
Exactly.
Israel was involved in supporting ISIS. That's why ISIS never attacked Israel (except that one time accidentally which they apologized for! How crazy is that?)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-is...
Israel also supported rebel groups in Syria https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-acknowledges-long-cl...
> Israel has really no history of any hostility towards Iran that predates their proxy wars on Israel. There is absolutely no rational reason or excuse for Iran to be attacking Israel.
Israel has a history of hostility towards multiple neighbouring states. US has invaded Iraq for Israel. Iran does not want to be next.
> Exactly.
So you agree Israel should not be allowed nuclear weapons
Palestine Syria Lebanon Yemen And Iran
Have all been bombed repeatedly by Israel
Syria is a different story. Israel did bomb military assets in Syria once the Assad regime fell/fled out of concerns they would fall into the hands of Jihadists. It also took territory to expand the zone it controls in case said Jihadists have intentions of proceeding into Israel. It took advantage of a vacuum in an uncertain security situation. During Assad's reign it did not bomb Syria since the 1973 war (where Syria attacked Israel with no provocation, that was Assad the father fwiw).
Additionally, Israel bombed Damascus during Assad’s reign. Here’s one recent example (bombing an embassy building):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_airstrike_on_the_Ira...
> no provocation
There’s a long history of violence in that region. To say that either side was “unprovoked” is a bit rich.
E.g https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_cla...
Iran doesn't want to end up like Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya.
(And before the argument changes subject, I think Iran [and others] are justified in being angry with Israel about what they're doing in Gaza.)
https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
Trump chose to break promises. Now we are seeing the outcome of the resulting breakdown of diplomatic relations.
Safer for who? Would anyone be lobbing missiles into Tehran if Iran had nukes?
Given how Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine were treated after dismantling their nuclear programs, and given how much grace countries like North Korea are given you'd be an idiot to not have nuclear program, especially when the US accuses you of having on.
Remember, Iran agreed to nuclear deproliferation under Obama, and the next guy tore it up. It's only rational to try and develop nukes and I'd argue its safer if Iran had nukes. Kids wouldn't be dying under rubble in Tehran otherwise.
Nuclear deproliferation is complete joke unless the US and Russia are the first to give up their nukes.
The initial nuclear agreement that Trump tore up was a good starting point
US just kept insisting on 0% enrichment.
It was the only other nuclear armed country of the Middle East crying wolf, which they have since decades before I was born.
Japan has the rockets, the material, and the know how. They’re sometimes described as a screwdriver turn away from a bomb.
> The IAEA report raised a stern warning, saying that Iran is now “the only non-nuclear-weapon state to produce such material” — something the agency said was of “serious concern.”
> The report by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency — which was seen by The Associated Press — says that as of May 17, Iran has amassed 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60%.
> U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
https://apnews.com/article/iran-nuclear-iaea-uranium-7f6c996...
> "The Board of Governors... finds that Iran's many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the Agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations in Iran ... constitutes non-compliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with the Agency," the text said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iaea-board-declares-iran...
Anyway, there's a difference between having enough enriched uranium for a bomb, and actually making that uranium into a bomb. But it's not that big of a difference, it's not like enriching uranium to weapons-grade isn't bad.
Indeed, to venture off-topic, Israel has sought nuclear weapons for as long as it has existed, which one might plausibly construe as further evidence that their state was knowingly and willingly established by military force, without much pretense that it could ever persist otherwise.
> I ask mainly to be convinced one way or another.
"Let Iran do whatever?" is not even close to a neutral perspective.
The intent is not clear. You come across as lying about neutrality.
Or learn how to not write non-leading questions.
Edit: Hey Hey editing all your posts doesn't make you look more sincere, that's just being more antagonistic.
They’ve said they’re not making weapons.
Trump pulled us out of a deal where we lifted sanctions in order to ensure there were no weapons.
This is embarrassing and outright illegal.
I expect you to deny or water down most of my claims, so to spare a long flamewar, just assume i've given all the generic standard responses everyone here has seen 100 times. I agree with most of them.
But what business is it of Iran whether or not israel exists? They don't seem to care about palestinians too much otherwise they wouldn't be supporting hamas and the war they started.
It's a genocidal regime, despised by most of her citizens. They fund proxy wars across the middle east based on religious extremism. They deserve everything they are getting and with all due respect only an idiot would support them.
[1] https://inis.iaea.org/records/fe51q-17w28/files/35015774.pdf
[2] https://fissilematerials.org/library/doe16.pdf
HEU has clear advantages over LEU for submarines – LEU submarines need to be refuelled once every decade (give or take a few years), weapons grade HEU reactors are never refuelled – the initial fuelling is enough to last 30-40 years, and by the time refuelling is becoming needed, the submarine is retired/scrapped.
This was also part of Australia's justification for backstabbing France over AUKUS. Australia was paying France for diesel-electric submarines, but if it wanted nuclear, France can provide that too – but French nuclear submarines are LEU not HEU – the US and the UK are the only nations which have weapons grade HEU subs. [0] Of course, an arguably much bigger factor was Anglosphere strategic alliances versus greater cultural/political distance from France, but it is diplomatically helpful to be able to appeal to a justification which is more objectively technical in nature.
In an attempt to manage non-proliferation concerns, I understand the AUKUS plan is that when they start constructing nuclear submarines in Australia, they'll build and fuel the reactor in the UK (or possibly the US, but the UK is apparently more likely), ship it fuelled to Australia for installation in the submarine, and then at the end of the submarine's life, the reactor will be removed from it in Australia and then shipped back to the UK for defeuelling and disassembly. But, I guess it is an open question to what extent such an exercise is required by the letter of the non-proliferation treaty, versus whether it will be done that way simply to close down a potential line of diplomatic and political criticism.
[0] Russian and Indian sub fuel is HEU by IAEA definitions, but significantly less enriched than the US/UK subs, which use weapons grade uranium as fuel. Some Soviet era subs did use weapons grade HEU
OP seems to expect everyone to believe that any regime invests years and small fortunes in research sites built in networks of bomb-proof bunkers buried inside mountains, right next to their network of ballistic missiles, to research medical applications.
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/iran-nuclear-un-inspectors-b82c92... [2]: https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/06/1164291
Besides, wasn't this whole thing triggered by a UN report showing they had made a lot more 50% enriched stuff than expected? I.e. the monitoring "worked"
If you genuinely have no interest in uranium for weapons, it makes more sense to buy it from a country known to supply it at purities and quantities for peaceful purposes than to build you own centrifuges under mountains. Iran is/was either using uranium enrichment for weapons development or a political bargaining chip.
This blanket statement is so inaccurate it is useless. HEU is a range, medical or research applications usually use 20–30% enriched Uranium, not the >60% Iran is (has been?) currently working on.
I am not sure the word is suitably used here.
Franco (loosely). "We'll be marching towards Madrid in four columns. The fifth column is already in the city".
A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or another nation.
Iran has produced a large amount of >60% U-235 (enriched), probably hundreds of kilograms, way more than would be required for any peaceful purpose. I don't think any modern medical uses actually require enriched uranium any more. And anyway, how much medical imaging or radiation treatment could you possibly be doing? And they could be developing propulsion systems, that wouldn't be a peaceful purpose (it would be a military ship).
Put all this together and it seems abundantly clear that the sole purpose of Iran's HEU program is the production of nuclear weapons. HEU isn't required in any significant amount for peaceful purposes.
Not true. One simple reason could be just to keep the appearance of the program ongoing in order to gain leverage in negotiations. Remember that Trump pulled US out of the negotiations on his first term, this could easily just be Iran's response to it.
E: and is it acceptable when used against Israel/US?
If I point a gun at my wife during a divorce proceeding and a cop shoots me, that's on me, no? Even if I never meant to pull the trigger and the gun wasn't even loaded.
The real reason is this: Israel is in a unique position where they have removed all threats at their borders so they can finally attack their biggest enemy. So they do that, and while doing so pull the US with them. We are at the brink of a massive war that will have millions of casualties, with even more millions fleeing to Europe, destabilizing the world even further.
You probably bought the reasoning about Saddam's WMDs as well.
This thread started with you saying "maybe they are doing it as a negotiation tactic". And yet simultaneously you think it is everyone else's fault if such a tactic is taken seriously?
You can't have it both ways.
I don't know how you could read my comment and conclude that.
Sure, we can call it high stakes negotiation tactic if that's what you prefer, but let's not kid ourselves why the attacks started in reality.
Come on you gotta at least try
Yet it's framed as "misconceptions perpetuated by Israel and its 5th column in US media"
Bush Jr and his buddies are IMO unindicted war criminals. It remains to be seen if this current act puts Trump in the same shoes. I hope Iran really did have a nuclear weapons program and that this attack is in some way justified. But I won't believe or disbelieve it until we know more, corroborated by trustworthy sources outside the US.
I see both arguments, but I’m curious what others think
Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine has nukes. The US would not have dismantled Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran if they had nukes.
You look at a country like North Korea and they get the red carpet despite have an incredibly oppressive regime and spending millions on cyber attacks and corporate espionaige. You know why? Because they have nukes.
It's not a question of "trusting" Iran. Iran with nukes is more geopolitically stable situation than Iran without nukes. As it stands today, Iran without nukes, means that Lockheed Martin gets to fleece another 10 trillion dollars from the American public for the next decade.
This is one of the most wrong things anyone has ever said. If Iran successfully develops a nuclear weapon, it would almost certainly compel its regional rivals, namely Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, to pursue their own nuclear weapons to maintain a balance of power. A Middle East with multiple nuclear states is a nightmare scenario, dramatically increasing the chances of miscalculation or nuclear use.
Iran with nukes would almost certainly act far more aggressively just like Russia has with Ukraine.
Though your point about the US being more capable of destruction than Iran is obviously true. China also is more capable of destruction than Iran, as are Israel, Russia (as we see today with their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine), and many others.
Beyond that, there are moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons. I know people who think it would have been more moral to force a Japanese surrender via many Japanese and American soldiers to die during an invasion of Japan, than for the US to kill civilians with nuclear weapons. I'm not sure I agree with that line of thinking, but I can't dismiss it either.
If you were firebombed or killed in a human meat wave in Stalingrad you are just as dead as someone killed with big bomb.
I think the moral argument about killing more and more Americans or Japanese during an invasion is a fun theoretical discussion, but in a war your people matter and the enemy’s don’t in cases like this where you have two clear nation states engaged in total war. Certainly the circumstances of the wars matter, but in the case of World War II I think it’s rather clear cut, and opinions to the contrary are generally revisionist history meant to continue to make America look like a bad guy in order to cause moral confusion and social division.
> Beyond that, there are moral questions about the use of nuclear weapons. I know people who think it would have been more moral to force a Japanese surrender via many Japanese and American soldiers to die during an invasion of Japan, than for the US to kill civilians with nuclear weapons. [...]
Nuts!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_...
It's not a suggestion. It's a well-supported historical fact.
The incident took place in 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.” The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions.
The first problem is that you are using this quote as an appeal to authority. Eisenhower might have written that he thought it wasn’t needed to end the war, but he was just one voice amongst many.
The second problem is you’re not reading carefully with historical context.
Japan and its leadership consisted of various factions, ranging from hardliners who wanted to arm every single Japanese citizen and fight to the last child, to those who wanted to surrender and negotiate a peace settlement.Prior to the usage of the atomic weapons to quickly end the war, Japan planned to continue fighting, and the Japanese Army in particular was preparing the homeland to fight to the death.
The hardliners who brought Japan into war still had enough sway at this juncture to continue the war and planned to do so.
When Eisenhower says “it was my belief”, he’s partially right, there in fact were Japanese military and political officials who were trying to end the war in a way that saves face, and protects the honor of the Emperor. But the problem with his belief as stated is that although there were in fact those folks seeking to end the war, they didn’t have control and could not stop the war on their own.
Prior to the usage of the atomic weapons, the United States knew the war was going to be won, but what it didn’t know was whether Japan really was going to fight to the last child or sue for peace. Given the American experience at Okinawa many believed the fighting would continue, and that it would be bloody and many lives would be lost.
Instead of dealing with all of that uncertainty, they used the bomb. Japan still hadn’t surrendered with some Imperial Army leadership believing the Americans couldn’t posses more than 1 or 2 and so Japan could keep fighting. The US used it again. Hirohito had enough. Japan surrendered. Etc.
The politics of the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy, domestic officials, and the Emperor are quite complicated. There were disagreements and misgivings before war with the United States even took place, and as the war continued there were disagreements even when it seems obvious in retrospect that the United States “didn’t need” to use the atomic weapons.
But presenting a single quote from a single man, albeit an important one, as though his disagreement is a coup de grace on a discussion about the usage of atomic weapons to end the war is lazy at the very least, if not downright rude.
Instead of dropping a random quote from Eisenhower and being lazy, you should pull up your keyboard and write your original thoughts on the matter, cite your sources where you see fit (I’m not asking for those) and present a coherent argument.
As easily as you can produce a quote, so too can that quote be dismissed as just some guy’s opinion. Clearly the President thought differently and used the bombs.
I personally am of the opinion that if using the bombs saved the lives of a few thousand (at least) American soldiers it was worth it. Japan started the war. I’m an American - American lives matter more to me than do the lives of others in the context of World War II, including civilians.
I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm not choosing random quotes. I chose Eisenhower since I was surprised to learn his opinion on the subject, and actually read the quote out of a paper copy of his autobiography. So while I can't be 100% sure that he wrote that, it seems extremely likely that he did.
Until a few years ago, I believed what I had learned in school - that the bombs were necessary to end the war more quickly, and that they actually saved both American and Japanese lives by hastening the surrender. If invading the home islands was the only way, and if there was a fight to the last person, then that would be a reasonable conclusion.
A few counterarguments I heard over time were not easy to dismiss:
1. Why did the surrender come on August 15th? Since no more bombs arrived after August 9th, what changed? In particular, if the US had more nuclear weapons to use, where was the August 12th bomb, since there was apparently a 3 day cycle. From the perspective of the Japanese military leadership, one explanation would be there were no more ready, so the urgency to surrender before further bombs would be lessened.
2. Why did Operation Meetinghouse (March 10th, 1945) which caused a similar amount of destruction with only conventional weapons not precipitate a surrender?
3. How important were the other reasons to use the weapons, such as: a. Testing out their effectiveness against a real enemy target. Conducting such a test initially seemed hard to believe, but in context of the firebombing of cities in Japan (e.g. Tokyo) and Germany (e.g. Dresden) may have made this test plausible to Allied military leaders. The fact that two different types of bomb were used bolsters the argument that this was in part a test. b. Deterring the Soviet armies from continuing to take territory because they had the conventional means to doing so. In other words, this was not just to end WW2, but to set the stage for the post-war environment that was coming soon. c. Making sure that the huge expense of developing the weapons wasn't "wasted" by not using them against an enemy.
I've read Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" (which I just re-read now) since it's the most concise yet persuasive argument I've encountered in favor of using atomic weapons to save lives. If I knew of a similar writing making the opposite case, I would share it here. If you know of such a thing, please let me know.
My current understanding of the situation is that the accumulation of damage inflicted against Japan helped cause the leadership to surrender. The proximate tipping point was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. That meant the end of their peace treaty with the Soviets, the foreclosing of the possibility of the Soviets facilitating peace negotiations with the Allies, and increased the likelihood of an invasion of the home islands by the Red Army before an American invasion could happen. This is the event that finally brought the Japanese government to their senses.
I didn't meant to imply I was questioning that he wrote what was quoted and I apologize if I did so. It was just that he was but one person in an excruciatingly complicated political dynamic and neither the United States nor Japan had perfect information. I'm not sure we knew that Japan would surrender, and even so I think we forget the utter insanity of World War II and how that drove nation states to do, what seem like in hindsight, to be crazy things or at least take suboptimal actions. With respect to some of your questions regarding various dates, my understanding is that you can chalk some of that up to the fog of war, lack of instantaneous communication, and more. It takes time to send a message to Washington from the Pacific, etc.
> In other words, this was not just to end WW2, but to set the stage for the post-war environment that was coming soon.
I have little doubt that this was a factor (as were other items mentioned), though I don't think it was the primary reason of course - i.e. testing.
Given how absolutely abhorrent the Soviet Union was to become and even today the situation we find ourselves in with a nuclear armed Russia, Churchill and Patton (among others) made sincere, if not perhaps flawed arguments for taking the war immediately to the Soviets but we simply did not have enough nuclear weapons I think at the time.
We didn't know for sure that Communism would fail, although it seems so obvious in hindsight given that it's a failed/flawed ideology. What was it that Teddy Roosevelt said? I don't recall the exact quote but something about the man in the arena. I think that's applicable here. Well, it's applicable to almost all of the wartime decisions that were made. We weren't there. It wasn't my son or daughter dying on some random island in the Pacific. It wasn't me taking a bullet to the chest, or losing an eye, or a leg. How dare I, or anyone else alive today judge the actions of those enduring such horror? An end to the war, by any means possible, seems appropriate to me, however, even if that means as some say unnecessarily killing "innocent" civilians to save American lives. If there were other benefits to using the atomic weapons, so be it.
We're so quick to judge the actions of our leadership at the time, but we shouldn't forget that in the end we came not to conquer but to liberate. And we helped to liberate both Europe and Japan, and of course the Philippines, China, and others from the yolk of despotism. I reject any and all cynical takes to the contrary as useless and corrupt.
> My current understanding...
I largely agree, but want to reiterate that the leadership of Japan wasn't sitting around some conference table saying "oh but please America let us just surrender!". To the very moment of surrender there were hardliners who stood against it. Only when the emperor, with what I have come to understand to be quite a bit of difficulty, issued an end to the war did it finally end. My memory may be incorrect but even after that the Imperial Army, or at least factions of it, wanted to continue to fight. As you mention and I understand currently, there are some historians who have argued that the Japanese did not want to surrender or did not have the political will to do so when the atomic bombs were dropped (assuming the Americans did not have more) but the Soviet invasion was the tipping point. Which I think goes to further show that dropping the bombs on the Japanese wasn't some wonton act of aggression but the United States continuing to take the fight to a determined and dangerous enemy.
I think also with respect to the Soviets, they partially entered the war with Japan for territorial gain and to make sure they had a seat at the table for the negotiation in the Pacific.
> Thank you for your thoughtful reply
Thanks to you as well. I hope I didn't come across too poorly, it's hard to convey over text. I do find it irritating when someone is like "here's a link, here's a quote, go watch this video or read this book" and instead of making a compelling argument for themselves based on what they have learned they want you to spend all of your time arguing with their quote, so you spend a lot of time picking a part a video or an article or something and they don't contribute much to the discussion themselves.
You are an evil and stupid person.
>Japan planned to continue fighting, and the Japanese Army in particular was preparing the homeland to fight to the death.
No they didn't. They didn't want an unconditional surrender, they had sued for peace multiple times and it was ignored.
So instead of us negotiating with Japanese we completely destroyed two civilian cities to put them in their place.
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."
- Adm. William Leahy, President Harry Truman’s chief military adviser
"First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."
- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
"The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."
- Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945
"The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment ... It was a mistake to ever drop it ... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. "
- Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr., 1946
"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons ... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, 1950
So we have the supreme allied commander, commander and chief of the pacific fleet, and the chief military advisor to Truman all on record saying the bomb was not necessary nor really saved American lives.
Then we have people like you on the internet saying otherwise, with no proof.
Really quite the contrast.
This isn't true at all. You don't need to bomb civilian cities to end a war. The Japanese government, specifically the emperor had already indicated they wanted to negotiate. They were already well aware they couldn't win the war.
There is far, far more evidence that the U.S. just couldn't help itself and wanted to demonstrate our/their new weapon:
"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan."
- Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
In true U.S. fashion, we had to create a boogeyman to commit some atrocity in order to achieve absolution for the evil we inflicted upon our fellow man.
But hey, don't take my word for it:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing...
* https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go?si=cXL4QevdwyYFQ-0i&t=5912
[1] https://archive.is/IcLBh
We do not significantly disagree, but I take umbrage at the repetition of the pernicious lie that Iran wants nuclear weapons. They want sovereignty in their land and justice for the Islamic people. This is a reasonable position.
It’s clear at this point that such deterrent works, and it’s also not clear what other deterrent might work in its stead. Some of the big imperialist wars of the last half-century likely would have been avoided had the invadee been armed with nukes.
Oh wait, we did. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_...
Cancelling the Joint Agreement is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. In particular, it was clearly an expression of Trump's animus to Obama.
Otoh, ballistic missiles eventually become a western europe/NATO security issue.
Not exactly sure how close Iran would be to that, but that is an element of the situation.
Probably something other than the one thing that would justify lifting the mid 90's fatwa declaring the creation, possession, and use of nuclear weapons against Islamic law.
How aware is this community of the Supreme Leader's staunch opposition to nuclear weapons?
This is pure imperialism.
(I think the B-2 strikes were a terribly stupid idea and that Trump got rolled by Netanyahu here, but I'm not going to be negatively polarized into thinking the Iranian SL is a benign figure.)
What is the difference between Japan & Korea vs Iran? It is simple: Trust. On the surface, sure, what you say might be true. However, it is hard to trust Iran as they so consistently threaten Israel. What do you think would happen if Iran had the bomb? They would lord over Israel and threaten them on the regular. This would be massively destabilizing for the region and world.
Final question: Is it harder to build a safe, civilian nuclear power programme compared to a (safe?) nuclear weapons programme? I don't know.
What is the reason to trust Israel, who engaged in subterfuge to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s, over Iran?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident
We presented outright fabrications to the UN to justify an imperial war after the president campaigned against "nation building." It is hard to ignore the parallels to Iran and Trump, proclaimed "anti war" candidate that you had to vote for to prevent WW3. Here we are.
My father, a middle-class mormon and far-right political enthusiast, once told me in the context of the conflicts in the Middle East, "people will die for their country, but they'll kill for their god." This harrowing indication of his radicalization nonetheless holds as a true and instructive maxim.
Who is your god? For most of America, it is power and the best proxy for power is the demigod of Money. Avarice and greed are in, Christlike works are out. Too woke.
It is literally possible to use all of this incredible technology and productive capacity to enable food security, high quality housing, access to healthcare, unlimited access to the wealth of all human knowledge and digitizable creations, while protecting our only habitable planet and nurturing its biosphere, and so much more, for all of humanity. Yet money and the desire for power will see billions suffer and die in the next century while mass global extinctions will only decelerate due to depletion of species.
Why can't we do better than the current environment of lawless global and domestic violence waged by the US government? It is barbarism.
Isn't that subterfuge?
It is possible that mistakes were made in the aftermath of WW2. It is possible that the victors have rewritten history in a favorable light -- in fact, that is the most reasonable expectation. This must not be used to justify genocide for if our society takes that path the victory against the Axis powers is meaningless and evil will have triumphed in the world.
Israel is more than Netanyahu and less than the Jewish people. Humanity must unite and destroy the power structures that incentivize the hyperscale atrocities we are currently manifesting.
Those of you who received adequate Liberal Arts education will see through him, whether you agree with his intended rhetorical outcome or not.
You are disingenuous and malicious when you portray my position in this way. The Supreme Leader has a longstanding public opposition to nuclear weapons. He is the respected religious leader of the Iranian government. The actions of the Iranian government, including their adherence to the JCPOA that Trump capriciously discarded, are consistent with this fatwa.
You must provide some other justification for your stance than merely accepting the US propaganda.
It is extremely important to document the facile and childish level of argumentation within the industry whose hubris seeks to force the world into the period of its greatest calamities. Society failed to highlight the intellectual immaturity of the Nazis and it has yielded the material reality we exist in today.
Again, I appreciate your labor and contributions to the historical record.
By making that statement you are implying that I am being misleading. The reality is quite the opposite.
I believe you're referring to the former prime minister of Pakistan? If so, truly a derail. Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
I think the Shia-Sunni relationship is rather more complex than the post-WW2 anglosphere, quite frankly.
He is LYING. Because he is a liar. Who lies. Like about opposing nuclear weapons.
In fact, it implies that someone else is lying. Probably the country that just did a complete 180 on its intelligence assessment and attacked another country unprovoked, if you want my assessment.
It's not like the USA doesn't have a documented history of lying and engaging in information warfare to justify wars of choice. This isn't even our first time this century.
Doing whatever you want is just opening yourself fully to the full spectrum of game theory outcomes. The leadership in Iran is discovering what that means.
https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
The position you're taking only really works if you start from "Iran will always work towards having a nuclear bomb, no matter what." And yeah, if that's your starting place, you've figured out where that path ends up. You're never going to be satisfied with anything Iran says because your fundamental premise is that they can't be trusted to not pursue a nuclear bomb.
By walking away from the deal, we gave Iran a clear message: "you might as well pursue a bomb because we are always going to act like you are, no matter what you actually do."
No, it's a position that assumes some people there have an interest in a nuclear bomb, and some suspicion is warranted - which means a safe deal needed to have them some distance away from a bomb.
After all, if they just wanted nuclear power, they could have trivially had it without all this fuss. It was always so much cheaper to buy LEU than endure all these sanctions.
Understanding that Iran is religiously opposed to the creation of nuclear weapons with only the caveat that the fatwa declaring the development, acquisition, and use of nuclear weapons against Islamic law may be rescinded in the event of an existential threat to the republic, it naturally follows that people hold that belief because they intend to present an existential threat to Iran.
Would we have bombed them if they'd secretly been violating the JCPOA and developed nuclear weapons in 2017? It's worked for literally everyone else who's tried it and it is hard to empathize with a perspective in which the United States has true moral authority over a country that we destabilized and have continuously demonized.
Most theocracies do not declare themselves sovereign over God. If it's truly a religious duty than it exists independently of anything in our world.
>The ability to "do whatever they want" is probably not really a good reason to bomb them.
I meant that the fatwa proves nothing until it is publicly published. Bombing was due to the nuclear program and no other reason.
>capriciously discard the JCPOA, which is an agreement they adhered to restricting their enrichment of uranium
The agreement had sunsets, it would have very soon expired. It's better to actually solve problems and not leave them to successors.
>illegally starting another US war of choice
Every modern President violated the War Powers act. It's unworkable.
>Would we have bombed them if they'd secretly been violating the JCPOA
The way some people talk, very likely not.
Then it is very obviously a moral imperative for the leadership of Iran to have the ability to rapidly develop a nuclear weapon in order to protect its sovereignty, a concept you deny Iran, and its many people.
Isotope separation by centrifuge as a physical process follows the laws of diminishing returns, getting rid of all the uranium variations save the rare target weight takes more and more time as percent purity increases.
"Just a step away" was more a hard bridge to cross back when third party inspectors were at the enrichment centres and leaving locked and logged "long soak" spectrometer instruments behind. It's hard to enrich to greater levels without leaving a ratio fingerprint behind in the gamma spectrum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran#Secret...
"The revelation that Iran had built major nuclear facilities in secret, without required disclosure to the IAEA, ignited an international crisis and raised questions about the program's true aim."
You are aware the deal was entirely dependent on Russia, and the follow-on Biden wanted to sign (but couldn't since Iran wouldn't fully cooperate with IAEA) involved Russia even more heavily? There's no other place that both sides accept can store the enriched Uranium or supply fuel rods to Iran.
>Isotope separation by centrifuge as a physical process follows the laws of diminishing returns
It's the other way around. Going from 3 to 20 percent is much harder than 20 to 60 which is harder than 60 to 90. Going to 99.9999% would be tough, but is unnecessary even for nukes.
>"Just a step away" was more a hard bridge to cross back when third party inspectors were at the enrichment centres
They were allowed to enrich to that level under the deal starting in 2031, inspections would have tested if the enriched material was diverted.
Even if they could be effective at such short notice, it would have taken the US being distracted by some other crisis and being unable to act in the short period between detection and weaponization to lead to a nuke.
> As previously reported, on 5 December 2024, Iran started feeding the two IR-6 cascades producing UF6 enriched up to 60% U-235 at FFEP with UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235, rather than UF6 enriched up to 5% U-235, without altering the enrichment level of the product. The effect of this change has been to significantly increase the rate of production of UF6 enriched up to 60% at FFEP to over 34 kg of uranium in the form of UF6 per month.
0: https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-24.pd...
https://www.energy.gov/science/ip/articles/harnessing-power-...
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/08/723301/Iran-among-t...
It's much cheaper to use a cyclotron than get massively sanctioned - unless you what you really want is a weapon.
Here is a quote that I found from abc.net.au via Google:
Putting on my black hat for moment: I think Iran's strategy to tip toe up to the line of weapons grade uranium is strategic genius. (Of course, I don't want them to have nuclear weapons!) It provides maximum deniability so they can get as many parts as close as possible before the final 12 months dash to get nuclear weapons.https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-timeline-tensions-con...
Between this and Ukraine, the entire world knows now that even agreements with the previously highly-trusted counterparty of the USA won't keep you safe. Only nuclear weapons can keep you safe.
Off to the races!
10,000kg down to 300.
Clearly that was all for nothing, so no country will ever agree to a similar deal ever again. The deal worked great. Bibi and Trump failed.
>Clearly that was all for nothing, so no country will ever agree to a similar deal ever again.
Well, yeah, bombing Libya was a huge error, so you end up between a bad deal and bombings. But that's inconvenient politically so nobody mentions who was President then.
Except for the part that it reduced proliferation, reduced stockpiles, and dramatically increased breakout time...? You think a workable solution is to just keep a country perpetually impoverished so it never even has the money required to learn how to enrich?
You don't understand the logic of nuclear weapons, do you?
As Ali Bhutto said: "We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get our own [nuclear weapon].... We have no other choice!”
> Well, yeah, bombing Libya was a huge error, so you end up between a bad deal and bombings
Say more. What's the relevance?
The breakout time was _reduced_ in the long run, since Iran was allowed to keep stocks and enrich (limits were to be removed starting from 2026 up to 2031).
>You think a workable solution is to just keep a country perpetually impoverished so it never even has the money required to learn how to enrich
They could just give up.
>You don't understand the logic of nuclear weapons, do you?
I do. They want it for offensive purposes, so it's best to handle it when it's easy. It would have been easier to handle AlQaeda without the risk of Pakistani nukes falling to it.
>Say more. What's the relevance?
Literally read the other talking points on the thread on how signing disarmament deals are cuz see how Qadaffi ended up. US did not have to make that choice.
"I just got a 1 year discount with a vendor"
The wise man lowered his head and muttered: "No, you have earned a price increase in 12 months."
> They could just give up.
Which makes literally no sense, as we are seeing. The only sensible move for any country is to develop a nuclear weapon as quickly and secretly as possible.
>The only sensible move for any country is to develop a nuclear weapon as quickly and secretly as possible.
That's in contradiction, no? Except there never was any plan or idea on how to get another deal. Iran would have been in a position where no deal was possible, and all the same arguments against what happened now would actually apply against a x100 stronger Iran.
Now, after having proven that deals mean nothing both in Ukraine and Iran, the only sensible move is to develop nuclear weapons.
Prior to us having broken both of these deals, there was a believable argument for the US being an honest broker who can ensure security in lieu of you having your own nuclear weapons.
> Except there never was any plan or idea on how to get another deal
What do you mean? You do the same thing again: economic normalization for non-proliferation.
Ukraine started in 2014. Libya in 2011. The truth of the world was already clear at that point, as well as Iranian intentions. The JCPOA was never going to handle a Iranian nuke but would have facilitated it. You cannot use economic incentives to fix a broken world, and Iran had many other motives for nukes.
On Fox News they'll tell you nuclear war is imminent but they say that because they want to bomb, not because it's true or not. They're only justifying their actions, not reacting to a threat.
You're correct. However, Netanyahu also claimed that Iran was behind the two assassination attempts on Trump during the campaign trail. A laughably transparent lie obviously designed to woo Trump. Then there's that this war is politically very convenient for him as it distracts from some Knesset political drama, increasing international criticism of the Gaza situation, and it obstructs Trump's attempts at a politician solution with Iran.
I don't know if Iran has nuclear weapons. Clearly they've been playing with fire for a long time but that doesn't mean they actually have nuclear weapons. But I consider anything the Netanyahu government says as deeply and profoundly untrustworthy. So colour me highly sceptical on it all.
Iraq was also not giving sufficient access to inspectors, which was one of the reasons people were convinced he did have WMDs. Things like "you can just sit back and say 'well, hopefully it's all innocent'" is pretty much what people were saying at the time as well.
Wars have unpredictable outcomes, all of this may very well cause more problems than it solves.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/08/723301/Iran-among-t...
https://www.energy.gov/science/ip/articles/harnessing-power-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran#Secret...
Why does Iran need all this enriched Uranium? Why is it investing so much in this? Why does it invest so much in its ballistic missile program?
Would Israel be a threat to Iran if Iran didn't continuously declare it wants to wipe Israel off the map and take all these actions to follow up on that?
Israel is tiny. It can't afford the risk of a regime that openly declares it wants to wipe it off the map and has acted towards that goal to get nuclear missiles.
I'm not sure the US "created" the religious extremist government in Iran. It's a complicated story. But the Shah was hated and like other similar dictators to date the US was happy to support that regime and turn a blind eye to the atrocities against the Iranian citizenry. Just like it is happy to work with other dictatorial regimes today as long as their interests align. When the revolution happened the Ayatollah was already well positioned to take advantage of the situation. Many of the people who rose up were eventually lined up against the wall and executed, like tends to happen in these revolutions.
- it's disgusting that the USA is always like, oops, my bad, we messed up when we helped you kill all those people, we were doing our best (sometimes in the case of Iraq going back and forth three times!)
- now that we're here, not sure what else we can do (we shouldn't let Iran fund proxy wars and have nukes)
But the US has also at times been a positive force.
I don't think the way to fix "messing up" that is to just disappear and step away. Like it or not, the US is the leader of the free world. Retreating means people like Putin and Xi and going to step into the vacuum.
But I agree the US should act responsibly. I'm also unsure where the current path is leading. It is weird that you declare two weeks for negotiations and then you attack though I'm pretty sure the negotiations would have led nowhere.
This is the IAEA report [0], claiming enough material for 9 weapons.
[0] https://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Analy...
Painting Iran as the sole aggressor skips the part where outside powers kept breaking the "rules" they imposed. Also forgetting that Iran's current repressive and theocratic government is itself a direct consequence of US interference.
Thus in my view it kind of doesn't matter whether what they're doing is right or wrong, and the sensible goal is to simply prevent the dangerous stuff without necessarily judging them. Thus limited bombings focused on nuclear enrichment plants, rather than some wider campaign.
The problem as I see it is that it may not work, and that nuclear bomb development might be quite easy.
1. No one should have nukes.
2. That probably won't happen in our lifetimes, so the second best world is: No one new should have nukes, and those who do have them should have as few as feasible, and fewer every year.
3. Global superpowers, obviously including the United States but others as well, have the moral authority to police the restriction of nuclear weapons development in other countries. We should work with international agencies, we should start with diplomatic solutions, progress to economic sanctions, then progress to unilateral, targeted, kinetic strikes. Try non-violent means first. Minimize loss of civilian life.
4. There is no distinction, in my mind, between "trying to develop nuclear weapons" and "successfully developing nuclear weapons". There is no distinction, in my mind, between 60% enrichment and 90% enrichment, or whatever. Non-nuclear countries should attempt no stage of development, at all, and if they do, should see their efforts stopped by any means necessary. Very hypothetically: If a non-nuclear nation lays a single brick to build a structure destined to aid in nuclear weapons development, I would support destroying that brick; there is no stage too early to intervene. Obviously this is hypothetical and there are realistic feasibility concerns with that, but when speaking morally/ethically.
5. All of this is true regardless of the governance structure or ally/enemy relationship of the country, but it should be obviously true, in triplicate, for a nation ran by religious extremists, who has a history of funding terrorist groups who attack our ships and allies, spanning decades, who tramples on the human rights of women and minorities in their country... to be frank, we have launched full-scale invasions of countries far better. If Iran wants a shred of my pity, their leadership could start by making any effort to join the 21st century in any way except weapons development. But, they don't. Why anyone defends them for any reason is so far beyond my understanding that I'm convinced half the people in these comments are russian disinfo bots.
I see this as an unacceptable position. Sweden will probably develop nuclear weapons, either on its own or with EU partners. I would prefer this effort to not be resisted.
Poland probably will as well. So position 4 is I think insane.
Instead, Iran should be prevented from developing nuclear weapons because they are crazy, and should only be prevented from doing so because they are crazy. There are some current nuclear weapons states that should have been prevented from developing nuclear weapons, but that is tolerable.
Furthermore, I think position 1 is also false, since I believe that nuclear weapons actually provide deterrence and prevent conventional war.
If the Iranians weren't crazy it would be good that they had nukes, and it would stabilize the entire Middle East, reducing the belligerence of other entities.
Nope.
It is not about "this is wrong".
It is about "this is in the leading classes interests"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54116567
Not that they keep to themselves either.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-o...
So, in your reality, China says "but, but, you guys got to invade Iraq and attack Iran unprovoked, that means we get to invade Taiwan" and we just have to sit back and let it happen because... reasons. Nope. That's not how it works. We don't hold everyone to the same standards, and we certainly don't hold ourselves to the standards we police the world to hold itself to. That's the way it works.
Life isn't fair. Get used to it.
Its astounding to me that there's this much discord on these strikes. Sure; everyone sucks, politicians suck, blah blah blah, we're on the same page on that. That's not an excuse to do nothing and persistently disagree with every decision any government makes.
If you think about that a little bit more, you may see that internal laws can change the best interests if coencequences are big enough. And maybe that is the point.
Taking out enemy nukes may not fit.
For those following along; the definition of terrorism is:
> the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
Which civilians are hiding in uranium enrichment plants? Sites that are claimed to not be for nuclear power, but for making weapons.
In large swaths of the middle east, Iran is considered a dangerous enemy. A nuclear armed Iran would quickly lead to nuclear proliferation throughout the middle east.
This isn't some recent initiative thought up for the heck of it: it's been on ongoing focus for a very long time.
I could even imagine that this has happened before in Iran and that the Iran-Iraq war was an important reason why the Mullahs could consolidate their power.
It could be worse.
But this is still bad, may be illegal, and isn't over yet. We don't actually know what they hit, if those sites were empty, and what's happened to ~1/2 ton of highly-enriched uranium or the regime's ability to produce more.
The only reason why he ran for office was to keep himself out of prison.
John Adams said the Constitution is intended for a moral (virtuous) people. Meaning, it isn't self executing. You need people willing to commit to its guidance. And yet just enough of the people gave consent to be governed to a man who sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the U.S. when that VPOTUS, Mike Pence, refused Trump's order to overturn an election that Trump had lost.
How can corruption of this magnitude be described as virtuous?
I predict this is a ploy to try to get us into a war, so Trump can have his third term, rejecting calls to step down "because we're at war". It's a little early, but our kids are already used to being in 20-year-long pointless wars in the Middle East.
Other oil producers would profit from this, ... including Russia's state-run oil company, which would help them fund their war in Ukraine.
That's a huge lie, if 'we' is to be read as 'Americans' and not 'the 1%'.
78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck [0].
'We' - taxpayers - 'spent' trillions and trillions of dollars on war in the middle east. What was the return on investment? We could have housed every American, eliminated student debt, gone 100% clean energy, and ended world hunger; with change left over.
0 - https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-pa...
This is being debated. A European judge who questioned this recently had his email access revoked by Microsoft.
Everything else doesn’t matter as long the words aren’t followed by action.
Here it‘s less clear
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn840275p5yo
Sound more like Musk‘s „FSD is ready next year“
But every group has their extremists.
We need to not forget the extreme Christians...
Seems even Israel might be more hesitant to target it at that point.
It is a big shame that many muslim countries are under dysfunctional governments and struggling to make progress so they can’t even protect themselves.
Personally I don’t agree with any kind of war but it is not realistic to expect everything to be fine while fighting inside your country, with a backwards mindset, discussing religion etc. not working honestly and expecting to prosper.
Most Muslim countries have horrifically high rates of consanguineous marriage, which directly results in reduced intelligence, increased birth defects, and other worse health outcomes. It also gives rise to dysfunctional, competitive clan structures that fragment and corrupt society: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/cousin-marriage-conu...
These countries will never be competitive and non-dysfunctional until they cut back on the practice.