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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why it's a problem. Several countries have nukes, including Israel which built 100s under the radar and doesn't admit to it.

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Religious tomfoolery undermines the typical calculus of self-preservation and Mutually Assured Destruction.

Religious tomfoolery is also the root of why large swaths of the American public continue their unbridled uncritical support for the rogue nuclear nation of Israel. That Israel plays a key role in the nutty religious prophecies of various right wing doomsday evangelical cults around the US cannot be overlooked when considering the situation in the region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism#Biblical_int...

Border disputes does not a rogue nation make. Else Pakistan and Israel and Russia and China and USA are rogue nations, which rather dilutes the term.

Israel's non-signatory status in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, combined with their refusal to admit the obvious truth of having nuclear weapons despite their not-so-coy threats of using nuclear weapons all combine to paint an unambiguous picture: Israel is a rogue state. They are dangerous; a threat to world peace.

To their credit, Russia, China and the USA are all signatories. Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and India are not (what wonderful company Israel finds itself in!); they are all rogue states. Of those all four have border disputes, all four have nuclear weapons, and all four have made themselves a threat to world peace. Of these four, Israel is the only one that continues to lie about having nuclear weapons.

If Israel does not qualify as a "rogue nuclear nation", then the term has certainly been diluted.

Because only we can vaporize entire cities full of civilians under shaky pretexts

Nobody has used a nuclear weapon against civilians in 75 years. You don't have to be a western apologist to be against nuclear proliferation.

However, this is not about nuclear proliferation, of course. Otherwise the US would impose tough sanctions on Israel and even threaten them with military strikes, because there is strong evidence that Israel has a secret nuclear weapons program. No more apologies!

We all know what the truth is. In reality the tough stance against Iran is and always has been all about access to oil, influencing the strategic balance in favour of the axis US-Saudi Arabia-Israel, and limiting Russian influence in the region. Everybody knows this and that's why nobody in his or her right mind buys the current sick Bolton nonsense.

> In reality the tough stance against Iran is and always has been all about access to oil

Don’t the sanctions prevent access to Iranian oil?

It's a small price to pay for salvation.

Not success to Iranian oil, long-term access to oil from the region by gaining and maintaining the strategic upper hand.

If Iran blocked the Strait, it’s mostly Europe that would suffer at this point.

Personally I think it would be interesting to see EU have to defend its interests in the Middle East patrolling the Strait. There’s no need for the US to be doing it ourselves this time around.

But if you mean something other than Iran blocking free passage in international waters, you’ll have to clarify.

The Strait is one motivation, yes, but I was also talking more generally about the strategic balance in the region. Iran and Syria are the last countries in the region loosely aligned with Russia, and Iran is a major disruptive factor in the region. By destroying and occupying Iran like the US did with Iraq, in theory the majority of countries in the region would become subjugated by the US, hence long-term access to oil. Not that I think this strategy could ever work, but obviously similar thinking was also behind the Iraq invasion (in addition to the unfulfilled "promises" made by the CIA during the first Iraq war, which were a thorn in some of G.W.Bush's advisors).

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