Hacker News Reader

Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

The alternatives:

1. Bomb them back into the stone age. That would kill a whole bunch of people, who as you point out are basically held hostage by their government and don't get much choice in the matter. It'd also permanently wreck their economy and infrastructure, cost lives on both sides, and usually has follow on effects.

2. Do nothing and allow things like funding terrorism, selling arms, committing atrocities, etc. You would know these things are going on, and therefore be allowing them to happen, and these things would probably be happening to your own people and allies.

Which one would you rather take?

View on HN

These are not the only options.

Funding of terrorism is still happening now, and their support is being funnelled through countries that are not under any economic restrictions, some even have good relations with US, like KSA. For example, most official fundamental/terroristic TV channels/groups are based there. Most shell companies used by oppressing regimes in MidEast are in the UAE.

I don't understand your comment as the countries you list are not under sanctions like the ones described.

"doing this to entity X stop that from entity X" "no, look, here is another entity Y where didn't do this, and it still does that"

If anything your comment implies we should sanction all of these countries too.

It's pretty simple really:

- Sanctions don't achieve the goal of stopping funding terrorism as evident by it still happening.

- IF the point of sanctions was to _actually_ stop terrorism funding, you'd start at the origin of where these ideas start, which is known to be Wahhabism/Salafism.

- At least, you'd start at the origin of how people holding these ideas were supported and given weapons and training to achieve regime change goals and to fight against Russians in Afghanistan.

One thing to keep in mind Iranian leaders are mostly conservative Shiites. As such you are never going to get them to stop supporting Shiite communities in the middle east. Even if they disappeared tomorrow whoever replaces them is also not going to stop. And as Shiites they want nothing to do with Wahhabism/Salafism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com