U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
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.
[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
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 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?
The core issue to the most of the world is nuclear proliferation, not low level terrorism and militia groups.
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.
Edit: 3 months, and source: https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2...
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...
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
Also, you can use 60% enriched uranium in the primary stage at the cost of a much larger, less efficient, and dirty device.
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.
Maybe I'm just putting too much weight on the trials and tribulations of developing the first fusion bombs, and the details of solving or working around those problems is widely known in the right circles these days? Plus advancements in simulation accuracy?
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.
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.
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.
Is the US funding of Ukrainian militias "legal"?
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.
The past two-ish decades has made it clear that nuclear weapons are the only defense against an aggressive power arbitrarily invading.
OK, they never signed up to it, but still.
Trusting the US or any agreement with it would be foolish.
So, with that being said - which nuclear-obsessive theocracy do you support?
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...
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device
But they do have ballistic missiles and can hit US allies
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".
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...
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.
the purpose of the bomb shelter seems obvious - israel is gonna be bombing because israel likes bombing stuff
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...
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...
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.
Which shows how much of BS the pro-war argument was to begin with.
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-...
"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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Switzerland's nuclear program stayed one step away from actually putting together a nuclear weapon for several decades straight. The fact that they could become a nuclear power, but haven't, and could credibly restart their program if attacked, is of strategic importance to them.
Is it building towards a bomb if your intention is to sit on the precipice of building a nuclear weapon for the rest of time, leveraging your position as deterrence, but never going over the edge? I have no idea! I also have no idea whether this describes Iran. Saying that there's "no question" they were building towards a bomb is ignoring this question, though.
As to intent, the concept of "deterrence, but never going over the edge" doesn't really exist--if you're never going over the edge, then where does the deterrence come from? At best it's a bluff, like threatening someone with an unloaded gun. But would you really want to bet your life that Iran has put maybe a quarter of their GDP (including sanctions impact; the program itself is much less) into a bluff? We can't read minds, and their costly actions seem like much more reliable signals than our guesses at their intent.
Switzerland is an odd comparison, since they got their capabilities in what they openly described as the initial stages of a nuclear weapons program. Since abandoning that, Switzerland has been divesting its enriched uranium. If Switzerland were instead building up its stockpile while funding proxies to (conventionally) strike its neighbors, then I'd expect some combination of sanctions and military action there too.
Exactly the same place as the deterrence in MAD. You don't intend to immediately nuke your geopolitical rivals when you build the bomb, you intend to sit around with a metaphorical shotgun aimed at your door for the rest of time.
> If Switzerland were instead building up its stockpile while funding proxies to (conventionally) strike its neighbors, then I'd expect some combination of sanctions and military action there too.
Sure, I agree. I approve of the strikes against Iran in principle. I still don't believe there's "no question" that Iran was going to build a nuclear weapon if nobody else intervened.
I don't see why intent requires immediacy? Perhaps this becomes uselessly philosophical, but I would say MAD requires the defending state to intend to nuke its adversary, conditioned on some future event (a nuclear attack on themselves, an existential conventional attack, etc.). They hope that condition is never satisfied, but intend to strike if it is.
> I still don't believe there's "no question" that Iran was going to build a nuclear weapon if nobody else intervened.
For clarity, I don't believe that either. By "working actively towards", I mean only that Iran was taking costly steps that bring them closer to a working bomb, and no other rational purpose could justify those costs. I think the distinction of what such steps we count as "lowering latency" vs. "building a bomb" is arbitrary and mostly meaningless, since as the latency approaches zero the latter goal is effectively achieved.
I agree that Iran might just have been saber-rattling; or even if they currently intended to build and test a complete bomb, they might have discontinued the program before succeeding. I just don't think intent is a useful focus (vs. practical capabilities), since it's fundamentally unknowable and could change at any time.
Saddam also had WMDs, we just don't know where.
Etc
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!"
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?
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
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?
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.
Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393
The GBU-57 is dope. Really curious to see how well it worked here
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.
Did you have to add that qualifier because otherwise there's at least one other nuclear power in Middle East that regularly bombs civilians.
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.
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.
- Saddam factually didn’t have WMD to use,
- If he had, they were not powerful anyway,
- Not a reason for groundbreaking safekeeping invasion,
- We all know it was a matter of petrol, not humanitarian causes.
I’m literally all ok with invasions caused by power struggles; I’m not ok with lying. Colin Powell lied and the UN Security Council validated,
…proving the UNSC is a shitbag, and irremediable, hopeless, handicapped pile of corrupt officials.
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 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.
It would be like the FBI saying they raided the world's biggest drug lord, and the only thing they found was a little bit of shake in a backpack in his garage.
You pedantically "but they did find drugs!"
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.
[0] https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2019/04/five-...
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?
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?
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!
Not saying you're wrong, but... source?
And, if so, where was it moved to?
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.
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 think we have a better option
I'd love help getting on board with this
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).
20 years is reasonable time to rebuild
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.
Which is why they likely were trying to possess them before and the US and Israel felt the need to strike
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?
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?
But yeah, you’ve got a point. It’s great for general dynamics stock outlook. lol.
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.
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.
They just execute 1000 people a year for crimes like not wearing the propper hat. Or letting be raped.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Perhaps forcing regime changes on other countries shouldn't be a quick decision.
That is literally the ultimate ambition of this war.
There's a long list of middle eastern countries where we've installed our stooges.
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.
Overall, there seemed to be a rather pronounced divide between the cities and the country side: In the cities you did see the occasional woman without hijab, some women working (particularly in the hospitality industry), and a few women driving (though still not many). Meanwhile, in more rural areas tradition strongly prevailed. So none of the things I mentioned are really commonplace yet (not even in the cities) – it's just that at the very least they're legal now and people (women) are making their first baby steps towards enjoying their newfound freedom.
So they want to either change the regime or change the regime, and don't much care which one?
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.
The Wikipedia article does not mention this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Palestinian_general_elect... but that doesn't mean anything given the current sorry state of that site, and this article supports this idea: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-electe...
This is relevant to the coup: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/04/usa.israelandt...
Thanks for the extra colour here.
This is more likely to be the end of the American empire than an actual change in Iran.
You think we need to occupy them? This isn't Iraq.
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-...
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.
A few bombs, everyone comes out of closet, unconditional surrender, democracy, live happily ever after... Sounds like American movie...
https://gamaan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GAMAAN-Iran-Re...
This survey is heavily weighted towards emigres and people who know emigres.
(If you mean Muslims, or Arabs, there are plenty of those in the Israeli parliament too.)
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.
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.
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.
Good ol US was fine though, if that's what you mean.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds pretty similar to the current situation to me.
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.
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
From what I gathered from OSINT types, they have breached the ventilation shafts above the centrifuge halls
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
Japan.
That's not to endorse any of these regimes, including the current Iranian one, just saying the variance is enormous around these events.
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.
If one were really concerned about the Iranians, the first thing they'd hope for is the containment of radiation not a revolution.
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?
You've had decades to change the regime and you didn't do it. If not now, when?
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).
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.
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.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...
We're working on it, 10-20 more years of legal proceedings and it's done.
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.
Christians, Jews and Muslims are monotheistic and all claim to be the religion of the One God, yes.
But the Jews rejected the God the Christians believe in, and the Muslims describe/portray a god that is absolutely incompatible with the Christian God.
So essentially no, they can't possibly all believe in the same God.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When people are mixing up basic facts like this you know the mainstream's knowledge of Iran is heavily propagandized. Really would help if people actually read a history textbook for once instead of believing everything they hear from someone else.
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.
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.
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?
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…
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.
Hezbollah is not Iran. Israel has gone to war with Hezbollah in the past completely without military intervention from Iran.
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.
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
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.
And the thing about war is that there's no real way to tell who's going to win. For instance I think many people believe that the war in Afghanistan basically simmered down once the media coverage of it simmered down. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The Taliban was killing US proxies and soldiers alike, by the tens of thousands. The only way we could have even possibly won would have been a full-on ground invasion which would have entailed at least tens of thousands of US deaths, which Americans would never tolerate so it wasn't even an option. We withdrew because we were losing - the Taliban defeated the US. No sort of proxy you could ever create would predict that.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...
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.
It’s not that people were just too dumb or too scared to do something about it.
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.
Agreed. Let's start with US and Russia first.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
Seoul is in artillery range of the border.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_re...
Before this there was every reason to doubt Israel's claims, which they've been making for 30 years, about Iran imminently having a nuclear weapon. But at this point there's a practically 100% certainty that they will be aiming to create nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.
This seems analogous to the idea that every household should have guns if they want to be safe.
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”.
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
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.
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.
Also people can be responsible for years until they aren't. As much as you believe you couldn't hurt someone you love, there is no way you (pr anyone else) can be 100% sure that reality will never change. If there was a way to know, people would be stopped or would surrender their weapons before they commit crimes.
That said: lock up your guns. Your mid will probably survive a stove burn.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Conversely, if people with guns think there's a decent chance you have a gun too, they'll be terrified of any move you make and have a high chance of misinterpreting any gesture you make into violence. So there is much higher tension.
Of course, there is a possibility that you're being attacked by a crazed murderer - in which case you're probably going to die either way. But this happens vastly, vastly less often that robbery.
You can take a look at crime stats from even the poorest European countries. The proof that lack of gun ownership in no way causes more violent crime is evident. Everything I just added above is an explanation of why this happens, but the fact it happens is not up for debate.
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.
If you re-read what I've wrote carefully you can observe I didn't refer once to my lived experience.
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.
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.
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.
[1] - https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...
Although on this topic I'd also add that urban areas have a similar issue. Criminals know that the overwhelming majority of crime goes unpunished, while people have a reality deluded by shows like CSI. Homicides, for instance, have the highest clearance rate, by far. And it's 47.5%. [1] Vehicular theft has the worst at 6.6%. If you end up with your window busted out and everything that's not strapped down stolen, there's no real point reporting it to the police unless necessary for an insurance claim because you're never getting that stuff back, and the thief is never getting caught.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearance_rate#In_the_United_S...
Source: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.3040...
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.
Turns out, making yourself a more dangerous target works to an extent.
> 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.
That's a lie. They broke the law when they entered the country illegally. Then some of them committed more crimes.
Just like you don't need a judge to determine if someone drives without a driver's license.
The states don’t have any sovereignty to make their own decisions about immigration.
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.
There are plenty of guns in LA, and any ICE agent or cop would be dumb to assume those they are arresting are unarmed because “it’s against the law”.
The red cities don’t have sanctuary city rules in place, so local law enforcement helps ICE and the arrests don’t make the news.
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.
Second strike weapons are in some ways a holdover from Cold War strategic thinking which it's sort of acknowledged probably overestimated the penchant of any side to engage in a first strike.
The practical reality of nuclear war planning has generally been that no one will accept even a single city-buster landing - and no first strike option is really reliable enough to guarantee you didn't miss one.
So achieving monopoly on violence first. Which requires forcefully disarming all opposition just like what is happening right now. Is the Sovereign hypocritical because they arrest and potential kill people they don't like but they do not others to do so? According to many mainstream political theories, not neccessairly so.
The matter of fact is that if a major power really wants to destroy a smaller power, there's nothing a smaller power can do even if they develop a handful of nukes, especially at the cost of their economy. Much better just to work diplomatically with said major powers so that interests are aligned rather than demanding a absolute respect for sovereignity which does not exist in reality. So then the question is, why can the Shah or the Gulf States work with Israel and America, but not the Islamic Regime? Even worse so, it's one to turn a cold shoulder that America or Israel wouldn't care much, but to actively fund proxies that destabilize other allies is just warranting a response.
But if law enforcement is not only not doing their job but actively threatening you: well, I guess 2A won this time.
The differences are so extreme it's a waste of time to discuss the analogy further.
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".
How do you explain India vs Pakistan?
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?
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.)
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.
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
Looking at india pakistan, and ukraine russia, its clear whether you should give your nuclear arsenal up or not
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.
(Probably the risk to S. Korea, and the risk of pulling China into a war.)
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.
More recent events show that it doesn't matter. India-Pakistan endless fight.
And Ukraine. Imagine they had nukes in 2022 and russian army advances. Should they nuke russian cities? It would not stop troops and give them more motivation to fight, to revenge. Should they nuke russian troops? To many nukes need for such large frontline.
The only nuclear weapons Ukraine would need is enough to reliably ensure Moscow and St Petersburg cease existing.
Do you really think the US would trade Washington and New York for a chunk of Mexico?
Like...that's the whole point of MAD. You might as well ask "well why didn't the US and Soviet Union go to war? Obviously they won't launch..."
The entire point of a nuclear deterrent is it stops people asking those sorts of questions, because ultimately it's a gamble. The only guarantee you get is "don't invade my territory and I won't launch". As soon as you start not doing that, you get to ask if you think it's a 1% chance, or a 2% chance, or or or... You get to find out when your capital and most populous city do or do not explode. And you get to roll those dice over and over again.
Like I said: what % chance of Washington DC, and New York City being obliterated would you take for a chunk of Mexico? Obviously if Mexico launch you're going to blow the hell out of it's capital and probably some other targets, but you aren't going to be doing that till after those two cities are gone.
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.
If it wasn’t the US as the world’s leading power, but rather China, the list of countries forced to give up nuclear programs would be entirely different.
I’m not against trying to limit nuclear proliferation, but trying to paint it as some democratic legal process is naive.
The US loves to use the UN as cover for their own strategic goals, but happy to ignore the UN if it benefits them. Same with those talking nuclear non-proliferation.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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...
Israel is not a singer of the treaty.
Several countries have voluntarily dismantled nuclear weapons programs (the participants in the South American nuclear arms race of the 1980s being examples), and several countries have voluntary disarmed of actual nuclear weapons. South Africa is not unique in doing either.
It is arguably unique among the latter group in not having inherited the weapons as a successor state from a distinct preceding regime, but even if we were going to draw broad conclusions from n=1 examples, its quite arguably that that is less relevant to the difference in experience versus that of (say) Ukraine than other geopolitical factors.
> It built 6 nuclear weapons during the apartheid era, but then voluntarily dismantled them and joined the NPT. This decision was influenced by international pressure, political changes, and a desire for greater global integration. Despite that, it suffered no negative consequences to its sovereignty or regional power projection abilities.
Kind of hard to specifically isolate the loss of regional power South Africa experienced from nuclear disarmament from the loss of regional power it experienced from other causes concurrently, but it certainly had less after than before.
What made me realize that was the people who jumped in defense of Russia, because the people of Ukraine aren't allowed to join EU or NATO, because for some reason the people of a sovereign country have to respect the will of a paranoid neighbour, who wants to keep a "buffer zone" for completely irrational reasons. Who would have invaded? The Belgians?
And I mention the Ukraine because they will surely think:"We should have kept those nukes". And wo can blame them, one of the powers at the Budapest memorandum attacked them while the other two reluctantly sent weapons. So with nukes they would have had better cards.
After this episode the Iran is probably more motivated than ever to get nukes. And who can blame them, they had a good deal with the west, Trump comes along tears it up, can't deal with the consequences of tearing it up, Israel is so comfy the US will dance to its tune they attack and surely the clowns dance. Lesson: don't make deals, these idiots just listen to raw power.
Who loses? Everybody.
It's unsurprising but very, very depressing.
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")
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.
Also, don't mix up a politician's personal opinions and official policy.
my interpretation is: disable Hamas (who embeds amongst civilians), then go after Iran (the true head of the dragon).
what do you mean by this? that there is no Hamas, or that they aren't embedded amongst civilians, or something else?
israel is instead making up its own hamas, and then bombing the food aid to target the civilians.
There is no Hamas and if there is there’s barely any
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.
And here's HRW and France regarding Lebanon - Israel even destroyed the fields: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/02/17/lebanon-destruction-of-i..., https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250218-returning-leb...
I am not saying is good or bad, just that the goal seems different here.
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”.
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
> As far back as December 2012, Mr. Netanyahu told the prominent Israeli journalist Dan Margalit that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Mr. Margalit, in an interview, said that Mr. Netanyahu told him that having two strong rivals, including Hamas, would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q...
Israel says it killed Iran's military co-ordinator with Hamas - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9yxrxwzzzo
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
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.
The result probably just desensitised people to what was going on since every little infraction the right did seemed to make them a nazi.
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.
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.
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?
* Hamas keeps its missiles, arms and other military equipment inside or underneath schools and hospitals
* UNRWA was functioning as an arms dealer by putting arms inside of bags of flour or other food items
* Hamas generally has its fighters not wear uniform, but instead wear civilian clothes or even niqabs (where only the eyes are visible). Making it extremely difficult for the IDF to determine who is a combatant and who isn't- and guaranteeing mistakes will be made.
* Hamas also uses child soldiers or orders children to throw stones at IDF soldiers - again ensuring IDF soldiers have to always be afraid the person in front of them is going to kill them and that they have to make split second decisions on what to do about it
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.
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.”
There are a few completely separate issues here. GPs comment is talking about the internal-to-Israel, state-level trials against Netanyahu. These have been ongoing, started several years before the Gaza war, and are being adjudicated in Israeli courts right now. These actually have the power to force Netanyahu out of office or actually make changes to how he behaves - because they are internal to Israel, and if the court decides something, presumably the police and military will follow the courts. (Unless there's an actual coup and Israel stops being a democracy - which I don't think is even remotely likely, btw.)
There is no ongoing trial within Israel against Netanyahu related to the conduct of the war. In general, Israelis view the current war as being fought legally.
Regarding what you call "genocide" or other accusations of war crimes or illegal conduct in war - that's something that gets adjudicated by international courts like the ICC and ICJ. The ICJ has a case open against Israel, claiming it is committing genocide, and the ICC has a warrant out against Netanyahu for war crimes. Those are completely unrelated matters. They also have less immediate impact - because there is no real way to force Netanyahu to comply with those warrants.
Edited: removed some inflammatory language I shouldn't have used.
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.
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.
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).
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
>The populace has been concentrated
>in a camp
ummmmmmmmmm
Who authorized Manhattan Project?
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...
"U.S. strikes failed to destroy ‘core pieces’ of Tehran’s nuclear program" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/24/israel-iran-ceasefire-live-u...
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.
Work through the cognitive dissonance; it’ll be okay.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/iran-uranium-...
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.
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
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?
I think you're underestimating how many Iranians the CIA allowed to be tortured and raped in the Shahist regime. Agree to disagree?
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..
USA is the most murderous country in the world, by far
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.
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?
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.
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*...
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
Iran claims to have shot down f35s
It's like they forgot about photoshop and just went full on AI. Photoshop would've done a much better job (in the right hands).
You had a hilariously large F-35 in one picture, like 5x normal size. In another picture, you had a downed F-35 was blown to pieces yet somehow the afterburners were still lit.
I guess they convinced some of the very lowest-information members of the populace, but damn.
This is rich. It took minutes to claim the air over Iran, what exactly gives you the impression of strength? Two US carriers parked off the coast is enough to not only maintain that superiority, but to down the entirety of their very aged air force.
> Iran to protect knowledge of its capability
Let’s think this through. You could announce that you’ve downed an advanced fighter without explaining how and unless the US or Israel gets a hold of the wreckage to do an investigation, nobody but the pilot will know how it was downed. This logic that Iran is trying to protect some super secret method of downing advanced fighters doesn’t pass the smell check.
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.
[1] https://iranwire.com/en/politics/136431-how-the-snapback-mec...
Just like foreigners who are lazy leeches on the social system and at the same how somehow steal our jobs.
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.
The US spends more on military than most of the rest of the world combined. Every conflict there’s a contingent of people claiming the US will soon be out of munitions and can’t continue. Now the statement is made on the first attack. The US is oddly perceived as weak by this contingent, which flies in the face of reason.
In absolute numbers yes, as a fraction of GDP that is currently not true (US ranks 8th place there). US doesn't even spend the 5% Trump demands other allies should spend.
It's highly debatable whether the US can contain china at its present size, let alone in a few years. China is vastly large than the soviet union, in comparison to the US, at the height of the cold war -- and merely to contain a smaller adversary, the US had to significantly outspend it.
The US can dominate its region relatively cheaply (ie., the western hemisphere); but if it wants to retain the ability to project power across the world, and be the primary power in theatres of interest (middle east and china esp.) then it's woefully underspending.
The US is armed to take on a world without peer competitors. If it had to fight a proxy war with china, dominate the middle east, and supply a land war in ukraine -- it would loose all three.
The asymmetry of power needed for the US to dominate the world is enourmous -- this was only cheap when the single adversary was a much smaller russia.
The US does not have the manufacturing capacity to replace 50% of its bunker-buster arms "suddenly". It simply cannot do it. So if a war breaks out tomorrow, where it needs these arms, they're gone.
The west is simply not equipped to wars with peer competitors. It's equipped for the taliban, not nations with fleets of air craft carriers.
> It's equipped for the taliban, not nations with fleets of air craft carriers.
The US has more carriers than all other nations combined, times 2.
> The US does not have the manufacturing capacity to replace 50% of its bunker-buster arms "suddenly". It simply cannot do it. So if a war breaks out tomorrow, where it needs these arms, they're gone.
During a time of war every manufacturing plant capable of being reconfigured to make arms or vehicles is. Just like in WW2.
The rest of this is just silly. The US “owns” the oceans. We go where we want when we want any call it “freedom of navigation“ and nobody stops us.
I’m sorry I offended your country’s capabilities vs the US, but there’s a reason the US hasn’t been invaded yet and it’s because it’s an impossible feat.
This is so irrelevant to the conversation, that it indicates you don't understand what's at issue or the basic geopoltical terms in which to evaluate US strategic capabilities.
The US isnt trying to prevent invasion, it's trying to dominate every region of the world. It's military is extremely over-sized to merely defend america. It's extremely undersized to dominate every region of the world in 2025. This is why comparing sizes of militaries is irrelevant and extremely misleading. Essentially all other militaries are concerned with only local defence and power projection.
From ~90s to 00s the US military was big enough to dominate the world, because it had no rivals. When you have rivals even half your size, to dominate them, you need massively out-class them. Consider that during the cold war the US spent 10% of its GDP, vastly more in real terms than the soviet union.
China can dominate its region of the world very cheaply compare to the US dominating *china* ! because defence is vastly cheaper than offence and geographically local power projection is relatively cheap. China is not designing a military to contain all of south america -- the US *is*
The US is trying to maintain arms to entirely ensure its own defence under any possible threat *AND* dominate russia in eastern europe, china in the south china sea, the middle east, ensure all shipping lanes are open, staff miltiary bases throughout europe, asia, etc. -- and the vast array of proxy countries in which it maintains a military pretence. There are 100k troops in europe, 40k+ in japan, and so on.
The US doesn't evaluate its military capability in terms of "what happens if mexico invades"
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.
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.
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
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.
sure it can. First, bomb the crap out of anything reachable and destroy normal economy. Then pull a Syria, a "democratic uprising of the freedom-loving people", perhaps get some help from friends at Al Qaeda or wherever the current Syrian freak is from, and Bob's your uncle.
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.)
Source please.
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.
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.
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.
Shame politicians always seem to lack a spine when it matters.
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.
There will continue to be ordinance flying here and there of course (probably until the end of time being the ME), but Iran has been weakened to the point that Wall Street has more than likely written it off for the near future.
Heh. I made more in a day than I get paid in month for my job trading the opposite. The Middle East hardly effects American gas prices.
> "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.
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.
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.
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…
By comparison, the Iranian goverment looks calm and rational. Israel has attacked Iran three separate times in just the last two years. The first two times, Iran tried to prevent escalation by calibrating its response and informing Israel beforehand.
It's pretty obvious why Iran would want nuclear weapons. The US and Israel have made it clear that they want regime change in Iran. Iran tried making a deal with the US, and what happened? The very next US administration ripped up the deal. Then, the Iranians tried to negotiate a new deal, but Israel and the US attacked them while the negotiations were ongoing. What lesson are the Iranians supposed to draw from that?
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.
What if they weren't working on nukes and got bombed anyway - can you imagine what kind of situation that would put them in?
---- 34. During the monthly interim verification (IIV) on 22 January 2023, the Agency took environmental samples from the product sampling point at FFEP, the analytical results of which showed the presence of high enriched uranium (HEU) particles containing up to 83.7% U-235. The Agency informed Iran that these findings were inconsistent with the level of enrichment of the UF6 produced at FFEP, as declared by Iran, and requested Iran to clarify the origin of these HEU particles.
35. In a letter dated 20 February 2023, Iran informed the Agency that “unintended fluctuations in enrichment levels may have occurred during transition period at the time of commissioning the process of [60%] product (November 2022) or while replacing the feed cylinder”. Discussions between the Agency and Iran to clarify the matter are ongoing.
36. On 26 February 2023, the Agency took destructive analysis samples from the cylinder containing the HEU product at FFEP, the results of which showed that the enrichment level of UF6 produced at FFEP remained up to 60% U-235. This cylinder has been collecting the HEU product since the start of production of UF6 enriched up to 60% at FFEP in November 2022. ----
If Iran "hasn't been working on" a weapons program since 2003, did the uranium just jumped from 5% (required for the claimed purposes) to nearly 83% (not consistent with any purpose besides nuclear weapons as far as I understand)?
Sounds like a strange claim, I wonder if that was really the consensus in the US intelligence community, or an opinion of Gabbard.
[1] https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/documents/gov2023-8...
I think it's not an american org, and you've just shown that an international org talked about iranian uranium - which is a non sequitur.
I do think that you can look at what the DNI has been saying since 2003 on Iran nuclear program and notice they never raised the alarm about Iran making bombs - which would have been a real threat and merited some notice.
As an aside, your personal conclusions on what Iran says it has been doing and what the IAEA says are not very productive unless you have some experience handling uranium production/stockpiling. Is that something you're knowlegdeable on? If not, could you possibly be wrong? Could it be that they are producing uranium normally?
Has the IAEA raised alarms in 2022 when they got that 60% sample?
Could it be that you don't know enough about this?
Edit0: also your 87% is from an environnemental sample - no one saw a uranium product at that concentration anywhere. You just assume that Iran is lying from the get go. What if this was actually byproduct of moving to 60% as they said?
> 87% is from an environnemental sample
and we all know, highly enriched uranium occurs naturally and can be found anywhere! Getting almost-weapons-grade uranium is actually a random byproduct when you try to enrich it from 1% to 3%, because that's how math works: you purify something and it suddenly catapults to 30x the purity that would've otherwise taken you months to years to achieve.
Again, is the IAEA a US gov. org responding to DNI? Or is ot an international org unrelated to US nat defense?
So why are we talking about them? Do you think DNI is an organ of IAEA?
And if you want to talk about them, can you see what they thought of Iran producing 60% enriched voluntarily (and disclosed to the IAEA)?
Your second paragraph seems to misunderatand both the situation, the process behind uranium enrichement and the IAEA report.
Actually - you seem to cherry pick bits of the report to support your dubious claims - don't you think they would have raised a flag if rhey yought Iran was making nukes, instead of the bits you fished out?
Edit0: this whole thing is you arguing that the US has been "aware that iran was making nukes" before the bombings but you fail to show any evidence of that. You show the IAEA report on Iranian urianium production, which DOES NOT talk about nukes, especially not in the extracts you've put here.
What are we doin' here?
Edit1: it just dawned on me - I don't think you know what en env. sample is. It's not some soil or "environnement" that they analysed - they swabbed surfaces around the plants (probably close to the centrifuges) and on one swab yhey detected up to 87%.
Env. samples are more likely to be contaminated than product (obviously) and the small amounts are prone to error compared to sampling product. It is more likely to get a false positive on an env. sample.
Edit2: Man I loooove reading IAEA's statement on the situation - they unequivocally say that nuclear sites should NEVER be attacked. Isn't that neat?
There were forces in Iranian politics who argued for making a deal with the US. They even won out in 2015. But now, they've been proven wrong, and the hardliners (who should perhaps now be called the "realists") were proven right. The US isn't a reliable partner, and is willing to rip up any deal Iran makes.
Iran gave the IAEA access to everything, and reduced its centrifuges and enriched uranium stockpiles to the agreed-upon amounts. Even the Trump administration certified that Iran was abiding by the JCPOA.
The reason Israel did not like the JCPOA was not because Iran was somehow not complying or because the deal wouldn't prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Israel didn't like the deal because Israel wanted sanctions to be maintained on Iran and for Iranian conventional military strength to be limited. Israel wants a weak Iran.
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...
Most likely Israel would attack even before such a facility became operational. It’s not like they haven’t done preemptive strikes before.
please look at the people voting for AfD, also how many of them are
people are falling left and right for the siren songs of various magical solutions and for the cults behind them.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like learned helplessness. This is only allowed as long as the governed permit it.
> the whole reason why you get elected is because you were against it.
Not every politician is reducible to a single, cliche hivemind. When the person lacks integrity and a record of telling the truth, it's unwise to believe they will keep all of their promises.
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.
> 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
Most certainly was. It's underground (Fordow is ~60m?) so it's either that or nukes.
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.
Also the B2 is better suited for extreme endurance missions like this where the plane is in flight for >36 hours. It has a toilet, microwave and a cot for the pilots to use during the more mundane parts of the mission.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/1lb8mkc/iran...
You can threaten a C-130 with visually guided WWII era flak.
You are unlikely to get an F-35 with it.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
> Enrichment is nonlinear
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.
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.
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".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb for others who haven't heard the term
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).
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?
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...
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?
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
478.0662045889101It'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...
- 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.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.
> 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.
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)
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
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.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossad_infiltration_of_Iranian...
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."
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
I dunno. America seems to like Norway, and they don't seem particularly authoritarian.
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.
Trump getting Nobel - yes, knowing who all the Swedes have given it to I won't be surprised at all.
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.
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.
- 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!
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.
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
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)?
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.
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?
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?
Whateva happened to the strong, silent type?
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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
hopefully I am wrong
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."
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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?
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.
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.
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.
Even Iran’s leaders would laugh in your face at such a naive statement, you should reconsider your media diet
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...
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.
“Violent Zionism” was inconsequential in comparison to the violence the Muslim population visited upon their Jewish (Zionist) neighbors/subjects/citizens from 700CE when Islam was formed through 1947 when the partition plan was proposed, and all the way to the present day.
So again, I say, you’re dehumanizing Muslims by refusing to acknowledge that they are responsible for their own actions. Because even if everything you claim was true (it isn’t), you are still claiming they are not capable of bearing responsibility for their own actions and instead any violence they commit is the responsibility of nebulous “western colonialism” and inchoate “violent zionism”. The bigotry requires to totally remove an entire religion’s agency is, as I said before: breathtaking.
You just have no idea of what you're talking about.
I have no idea what “legally affirmed” means in the context of sovereign states. The UN, or even the UNSC passing something doesn’t actually mean anything as it applies to sovereign nations. Paraphrasing Andrew Jackson: a law is only as good as the ability to enforce it. A bunch of random people agreeing to something even if they call themselves “The United Nations” doesn’t mean anything if that group of friends doesn’t have the will or ability to enforce whatever they’ve agreed to. They’re akin to you and your drinking buddies passing out edicts after one to many dry martinis.
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.
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.
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...
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"?
> 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.
(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?
> Links to a page that shows the exact opposite
> 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?
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..."
> 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.
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.
> Ashkenazis
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_...
"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).
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."
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.
Source for census data:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_JerusalemThe entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came.
Who proposed the Balfour Declaration 30 years prior?
Presumably during one of the frequent rounds of forceful expulsion from European states.
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.
Islam, ie the Koran, recognises the banu Israel (forgive my spelling/transliteration) from c.2500 years ago. Apparent muslims say "Israel has only existed for 50 years" (or words to that effect). The inference made is that they then have no rights to the land.
It seems the basis for the 'lack of rights of Israel to exist' is fundamentally opposed to the origin story of Islam itself.
Personally I find the concept of nationhood a bit ridiculous; but I'm not sure how practical it would be to organise a World without statehood.
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.
back to the point.
Journalist traveled to refugee camps in lebanon/gaza and then to israel to see how arabs that decided to remain are doing.
(following are more or less exact quotes from memory)
He describes how somebody were telling him in great details about giant house that he had had, with veranda surrounding it. how he will sit there in shadow of the orchard and the fertile soil that he had.
when journalists was visiting israel he decided to stop by this location. all what he found is shack barely suitable for cattle, 2 fruit trees and rocky soil that will be really hard to work.
also, while been in refugee camp in lebanon he had a meeting with somebody who managed camp. this person told him that most of those who tell him that they had untold riches actually had nothing: they were workforce for hire and were renting from landlords both housing and in some cases soil to work. he adds that most of them in a heart beat will give up on "right of return" in exchange to $10k and place to settle "anywhere".
additional nice touch in article it's description of UNRWA school (it's 1961) where they teach children that one day as soldiers they will come back kill jews/liberate their country
I have to say though, it's pretty unconvincing. It reads very similarly to saying: their right to stay where they are, or even not be killed by someone else that wants their land, is less because they're poor and renters (yuck!). I know that's an ungenerous characterisation of what you've said but it's really the core of the objection.
It does seem a bit low for some refugees to exaggerate their past wealth or to accept (essentially) a bribe to forget about atrocities committed against them and their families. But it's a totally incomparable to what was done to them in the first place, and certainly doesn't justify it.
I've never been in anything like that situation, and I imagine you haven't either. If I was totally destitute, forced to live in some camp (and still not safe), could I honestly say I do something similar (lie or take cash to run away)? It's hard to say but I don't think I could rule it out. But I like to think that I can rule out ever forcing people out of their homes, from land that I have no living ancestral claim to, and murdering the ones that don't run quickly enough, on religious (i.e., invented) grounds.
Maybe you've more to add, some sources to convince me?
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…
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496386/Pahlavi-and-Israel-t...
so what exact goverment your arr referring?
Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion.
In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite.
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.
(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?
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.
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.
People should just say what they actually mean instead of ambiguous words like genocide. Is the genocide limiting food aid with the aim of demoralizing the population into losing support for Hamas? Or is it directly killing people in the fighting? He could have just said that so his words mean something. Those actions might or might not be genocide but they might still be something worth criticizing.
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.
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
www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/un-nuclear-watchdog-censures-iran-a-move-that-could-lead-to-restore-sanctions
Israel couldn't care less about Iran until 1979. It's the Islamists who are obsessed with Israel.
If Iran stopped chanting "Death to Israel" and stopped arming anti-Israeli groups then Israel would have no issue with Iran.
It's a stupid slogan because it gives politicians ammunition, but it can be interpreted various ways. For example:
Ali Al Bukhaiti, the former spokesman and the official media face of the Houthis, said: "We really do not want anyone's death. This slogan is only against the intervention of those governments [i.e. the United States and Israel]."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Israel
Meanwhile, if you judge a country by it's actions rather than it's slogans tell me how Israel is looking right now on the "death to ..." scale.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
As convincing as your lunch anecdote is, I'm not sure you're can hand waive away the problem so easily.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel
A March 2010 poll by Tel Aviv University found that 49.5% of Israeli Jewish high school students believe Israeli Arabs should not be entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel
An October 2010 poll by the Dahaf polling agency found that 36% of Israeli Jews favor eliminating voting rights for non-Jews
A 2012 poll revealed widespread support among Israeli Jews for discrimination against Israeli Arabs, including 33% of respondents believing Israeli Arabs should be denied the right to vote, 42% objecting to their children going to the same schools as Arabs, and 49% "[wanting] the state to treat Jews better than Arabs"
And on and on and on...
I live here. In places like Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs are together all day, every day. 40% of the police officers in Jerusalem are Arabs.
What is your problem?
Why do you selectively omit the polls of Arabs and Palestinians... about lots of things.... (attitudes to Jews, support of violent Jihadist groups, etc etc)
If you want peace, push for peace.
If you want violence and blood, keep doing what you are doing.
My problem is that Isreal is killing innocent people every day and I want them to stop it. Their horrible record of human rights violations is undeniable.
So I'm sorry if this colors my view of Israelis treatment of non-Jewish people within Israel and makes polls like the one's I cited easy to believe. But you're right I don't live there so I don't know the ground truth.
> If you want peace, push for peace.
That's exactly what I want. How do you suggest I push for it then? Because from where I sit, a good start is to be critical of (or at to least stop supporting) the biggest perpetrator of civilian death on the planet.
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...
Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things
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.
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.
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.
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"
> 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”.
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.
Do you live in a place that has a death cult committing daily acts of violence and killing (against people on both sides of the fence, of both "ethnicities")?
Do you live in a place where billions are spent on offensive weapons (tunnels, rockets) and stolen from donated food aid (as Hamas has been hijacking aid for many years and selling it at profit)?
If you do not, do you have any idea how a group of people (e.g. a society) responds to ongoing violence and threats of violence?
Your dismissive "constant shifting goalposts and lack of self awareness will always startle me" is the mark of someone who sits in an armchair and experiences no threat.
Beware of being dismissive. This region needs people who push for the hard work of peace and avoid labels and dismisiveness.
There was a peace movement in the 1990s. It accomplished a lot (a million+ Palestinians live under a Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza was left to its own devices in 2005).
A death cult (probably two) killed that process. By killing people (including the Israeli Prime Minister). Years earlier, that death cult killed Sadat for his peace making work.
Support those who push for peace.
Call out those who don't.
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.
That is not a well thought out question. The answer is different in PA controlled areas, non PA areas, and Gaza.
And Gaza's life expectancy is different for members of Hamas vs. non members. And was one thing on October 6, 2023 and October 8, 2023.
Hamas has agency.
They could end the war a year ago or tomorrow.
Why don't they?
Do you know what Hamas is?
Do you know their charter?
Do you know that they diverted billions of $, meant to build housing for Gazans to their own pockets and to a huge underground fortress under a civilian population?
Do you know that most Gazans support Hamas, and that Hamas has made many offensive wars against the civilians and armies of both Israel and Egypt? (Hamas killed dozens of Egyptian soldiers running wild in Egyptian Rafah in 2014... Know what Egypt did? Leveled hundreds of housing structures)
Hamas has been in a state of war since the day they took power in Gaza.
Hamas has murdered hundreds of Palestinians, including many who worked for peace.
What do you want to see?
More violence and blood?
Or more peace?
Promote what you want to see.
(Digging out the 100's of miles of offensive tunnels in Gaza is slow slow work. Hamas could end the war any time, but they will never surrender. They will fight to the last Gazan child. Do you want that?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Religion is just another ideology, and it s not like Islam has a specific position about nuclear energy
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.
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.
Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.
And if anything, the last 20 years taught us that revolutions imposed from the outside never work
This is why US war-mongering is bad and we need to stop doing it. The US is absolutely ruthless. After all, we're the only country that has actually used nukes - and we did it on civilians.
There are cleaning people and canteen workers in uranium enrichment facilities.
And so on. Once bombs start falling, it’s a silly idea that there’s no innocent casualty and that people won’t fear for their life regardless of their status when they hear bombs falling in the neighbourhood.
[1] and sure, that’s Israel (for now), but I don’t think that you’ll bother with this distinctions once you see bombs falling down
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.
[1] https://www.threads.com/@djmelodie/post/DLNlE38PTNk?xmt=AQF0...
Depends on the effectiveness of the bombing.
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.
This also accounts for the bias in people you meet as the ones who like Iran tend to continue living there.
regime change has never worked, not with actual boots on the ground, let alone targeted air strikes.
where is DOGE when you actually need them?
Regime change and nation building worked so well in Afghanistan and Iraq. Onward to more death and suffering, I guess.
Internet used to joke about US "freedom bombs", but it's taken quite seriously and positively there.
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...
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.
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
Religiosity surveys in the middle east are largely bunk. Actual boots on the ground reality is very different. In the 2000s much was made about the rapid secularization of the Arab world. ... in reality, the exact opposite has happened with the youth.
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.
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.
People lack common sense, but not their appetite to ingurgitate the daily three meals that the propaganda machines prepared for them.
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).
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project#Log...
You can see the link in GP comment by yourself.
This sounds ridiculous.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Please, take a 15 minutes to educate yourself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Armed_Forces#Structure_...
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.
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.
They're talking about the current regime, from which it isn't clear the population will ever successfully take back their country.
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.
some religious lunatics would deem that worthy
so it even no need to be lunatic to act some nukes.
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)
is it crazy, sure. is it crazy story to say,no. it seems real.
A pretty popular opinion these days
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.
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.
Are you even arguing in good faith? Over the years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op9EFTPQhw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulXulltxXZg
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.
Israeli police began investigating Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for fraud in 2016. Israeli courts indicted him for multiple cases of fraud in 2019.
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.
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.
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
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").
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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
Democracies tend to be more resilient against rule by aggressive idiots. So being a democracy should be lowest common denominator.
> Power is always taken, never given. Following your rationale, Iran should do whatever to get its hands on some nukes real fast.
I have no idea why are you talking about it like it's hypothetical. Iran did whatever it could to get its hands on nukes as fast as it could since Trump destroyed the agreement that Obama signed with Iran.
And it resulted with their top leaders getting assassinated and their nuclear attempts destroyed. So was that really something they should have been doing?
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...
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.
In Iran's case this is further compounded by their consistent anti Israeli PR and anti-Israeli militias funding.
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.
That's just being deluded, being a in open air prison is different from being a sovereign nation.
Who has "legal" WMDs - the P5? Israel is a non-signatory to NPT, meaning their WMDs are as legal as anyone else's.
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.
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.
This is just... utterly absurd. The entity killing children (literally on a daily basis!), bombing hopsitals, schools, water treatment facilities etc, and carrying out campaigns of terrorism across the Middle East, is the rogue nuclear state of Israel.
'Propaganda' doesn't quite cover it; I think we need a new word for propaganda that is so delusional and verifyiably false, that it has no basis in any reality.
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.
1. They kill you (because God will give them the eternal hookup)
2. You kill them (same as #1)
3. Nobody kills anyone
Suicide bombing seems crazy and far from rational to those of us who aren’t in the death cult. But if you look at the actions of radical Islamists from that perspective, it is entirely rational and in line with both their stated beliefs and their actions.
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.
What?
You understand what would happen next, right?
Is there a single time in history when that has occurred? And if so, what happened next?
What a fantastically violent thing to say or propose.
>the israeli goal is the disappearance of all palestinians
If that is true, why are so many Palestinians alive?
If that is true, how do Palestinians have a population growth rate higher than any European country?
Palestine: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/state-of-pale...
Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
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.
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)
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...
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.
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.
By your logic, I am a little surprised Iran is still even a state then.
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.
No you don't, unless you're a dictatorship (including all the examples you gave).
The point is that you don‘t get attacked by anyone else unless you‘re a dictatorship.
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.
And on top of this terror groups are now growing powerful enough to fully control their own countries. The Taliban now has rock solid control of Afghanistan (before the war on terror they had majority control, but were struggling against a powerful insurgency), Abu Mohammad al-Julani controls Syria and US propaganda is framing him as a moderate or reformer, but he's not. He had a $10 million bounty on his head as one of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, even as we started running propaganda for him, exactly as we did for [de facto] Al Qaeda(from which he came) before they came back to bite us later, exactly as he will. Then there's the Houthis who went from a political movement to an insurgency to now having near complete control of Yemen in spite of ongoing conflicts with Saudi Arabia and the US.
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?
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.
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.
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.
/s
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.
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?
after this protests "for eu integration" moved to protests against brutality and when police escalate more it became "ant-regime" protest
Hell, several people even made a giant catapult on-site (props given for engineering knowledge though). What surprised me at that time watching is that the Ukrainian police were so tolerant of rocks falling on them. American police would have immediately opened fire. Of-course, that tolerance didn't last long once policemen started taking casualties.
initially it was just students who protested. peacefully. police beat them down. after this to maidan came adults (because it's not appropriate to brutalize children ) and started camping there. and later it escalated to what you wrote about when police (based on government orders based on russian suggestions) tried to disperse maidan camp.
you probably didn't watch it from the very beginning. I did. in ukrainian.
The right to protest, assemble, and even impeach representatives is just as paramount to democracy as voting. There's no rule anywhere that you just have to endure a poor leader - especially a leader who is leaning towards harming or removing democracy.
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.
Who's going to impeach them?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
- 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.
The Basic Law which passed with 62 for and 55 against, just states what the constitution of pretty much any European country does. Most European countries are nation states. It's countries like Switzerland, Russia and Belgium which are outliers. (Hopefully, one day, they will be broken up too.)
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".
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.
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....)
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.
Interesting that 20% of Israelis do not believe in a deity. 18% are Muslim. In Iran, Jews are 0.03% of the population.
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.
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
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.
America also has lots of brilliant people. Then we have Hegseth, Noem and the other fuck.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion
The attraction is that high enrichment permits a smaller reactor and less frequent refuelling. US submarines go over 96% enrichment.
Bunker fuel is in the news. Cheap oil for marine diesel engines is both polluting in the traditional sulfur etc sense and in the modern CO2 global warming sense. There are occasional attempts at wind powered sailing ships, or at least sail assisted ships, to reduce the burning of bunker fuel. Nuclear power for shipping is currently out of fashion, but is a legitimate topic for research.
> 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.
So you're saying we're here because America has mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations and this is the best move?
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...
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.
Remember that in the middle east, Iran is considered a dire enemy.
But that doesn’t matter anymore
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)
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
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.
It's a dire enemy because they're Shia and the rest (with some exception in Eastern Saudi Arabia) are Sunni.
Quite different from the Iraq war.
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.
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.
> https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker
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
Nice.
>...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.
However aside from a few consistent non-interventionists, opposing partisans seem to uniformly be using this as yet another opportunity to attack. So even there it hasn't served to appease all of the interventionists.
There's not been a President like the current incumbent.
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.
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.
This "oh the Iranians actually want to be bombed" stuff is absolutely nonsense.
It's also breeding a generation of young Americans that consider Israel their enemy: https://time.com/6958957/growing-antisemitism-young-american...
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.
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?
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.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-u-s-strik... ("U.S. Strike on Iran Began With a Ruse")
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...
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?
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.
Okay, you could be right about that. I don't know.
> But if this were the conventional wisdom, I'd say that it's clearly right
That's really the crux of the disagreement: I don't see it as being clearly right. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's biased reasoning on my part (wouldn't be the first time). But I don't think it is obvious how the Iranian regime is going to react. I don't think any one person inside Iran knows how the regime is going to react yet (maybe not even the Khamenei).
It sounds like you think it's obvious how things will play out. That's cool, but that's where we disagree.
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.
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.
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 neighboring rivals.
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.
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.
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.
Including Taiwan in this list is hilarious.
Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, and others, are certainly reevaluating the wisdom of their current strategy. That's the whole point I'm making.
Poland has said that they want nukes, but their specific ask was that US nukes be hosted on their soil; not that they want sovereign nukes under their own control, that the public has heard.
> 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.
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 sitesWe 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.
If there’s anything to that statement, things are likely to remain messy.
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?
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...
> Attacking Israel hasn't been a high priority for Iran.
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.
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
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.
Yes, I agree that bombing random forest is not that useful.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Simply declare a prior good state to be "the mean," then all we need to do is let mean reversion work its magic!
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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".
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:
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:
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.
How come whoever pointing out the fact that those who're emigrated later to modern Israel for the past century since the Israel - Palestinian conflicts started are actually outside immigrants, they themselves can be considered racist?
Actually most people would consider artificial emigration en mass based on the dubious promised land claim of the holy book of one single race religion in this case Jewish, is the act of racism itself.
However, when the new immigrants govt started forcefully displacing the original native people out of the home without proper land purchase transactions and agreements of the local native populations, thus becoming majority in a very short time span. This very act is even more problematic beyond racism and under international law it can be considered apartheid [1].
Since your ancestors are from Morocco, imagine if the Jewish and the Muslim of Morocco in the near future start claiming back Spanish lands by emigrating en mass, and forcefully displacing the local native Spanish just because their ancestors have once lived and ruled Iberian peninsular for several hundreds years [2]. Is this hypothetical situation is fine with you?
Fun facts, now Spain is allowing and inviting the expelled Jewish descendants in Morocco to come back to Spain and become Spanish citizen [3]. Why do you think that they're not extending this goodwill offers to Muslim descendents that were also expelled alongside Jewish population from Spain? I think you'll probably the answer because allowing it will most probably upset the demographics of the current Spain due to potential en mass migration of this Muslim descendants compared to much smaller number of Jewish descendants.
[1] Apartheid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apartheid
[2] Islam in Spain:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Spain
[3] Spain passes citizenship plan for descendants of Jews exiled centuries ago (2015):
I explained it. It ignores the fact the Judea/Israel existed historically. It ignores the fact that Jews were prohibited from immigrating back to their homeland. It classifies Jews as immigrants and ignores the fact that Palestinians also immigrated mostly in recent centuries on the wings of the Ottoman empire. You effectively define a start/end date for homeland validity that conveniently leaves out Jews.
> Actually most people would consider artificial emigration en mass based on the dubious promised land claim of the holy book of one single race religion in this case Jewish, is the act of racism itself.
Again, deeply problematic. First off, there's historical facts that show the Jewish land in Israel. It's evident in the archeology and history, it isn't up for debate.
The "promised land" narrative and relation between Jews and Israel is in the Quran and Bible. I suggest reading them. In fact when talking to people from Muslim countries they sometimes don't connect the narrative of Israel and Judea etc.
Do you even know why Jews lost their land? Why it was called Palestine which was never a country?
The Roman emperor got tired of the rebellions coming out of Judea and decreed that every Jew in the area would be put to death. For the final f*ck you to the Jews he renamed the territory and picked a name based on the old enemies of the Jews: Philistines. Based on Jewish writings from the time roman horses waded in rivers of blood up to their necks... It worked.
> However, when the new immigrants govt started forcefully displacing
Again. Deeply false narrative.
First mistake is that a government displaced people. Nope. You're mixing between the occupied territories which are not a part of Israel and Israel. The Palestinians who stayed within Israel after 1948 are Israeli Arabs and have full citizenship. Not displaced. Those who ran away due to the war aren't the responsibility of Israel, that was a war Israel didn't choose and the consequences of the war aren't its fault.
> the original native people
Second mistake. They are not. They try to claim it and some people back that claim, but there is no evidence of that. There is no archeological evidence and no Palestinian people in history. They have no history in common and that's one of the big problems they have. Unlike Jews who unified and came together despite the long exile, Palestinians still slaughter each other to this day. Looking at them as a single people is deeply ignorant of who they are. If they were a single people they would have had a country ages ago. They would have followed a leader just like Begin yielded to Ben Gurion and enabled unity.
> out of the home without proper land purchase transactions and agreements of the local native populations
Third mistake. When Jews started immigrating to Israel they bought lands en-mass. 7% of the land was purchased until Palestinian leaders and the British put a stop to that.
Most of the land had problematic ownership history during those times. After the war and the formation of Israel the status of many areas became in flux as many people were displaced on both sides. Due to that war Jews who were living in Muslim majority countries had to flee their homes and come to Israel while losing everything. That's 40% of the immigration to Israel. They too lost everything. Not to mention the Jews who were displaced/murdered in the holocaust.
This was not unique or special in any way: https://www.news18.com/opinion/opinion-why-muslim-world-shou...
> This very act is even more problematic beyond racism and under international law it can be considered apartheid
You provided the wrong link. It also very clearly states that this is not the case:
"inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."
When Israel was formed in 1948 all Arab residents that remained instantly became citizens with full rights. So there's no racial aspect here. Was there discrimination? Sure. But that's not apartheid and not systemic.
Notice that after that and most following wars Palestinians still had most of the territory the UN assigned to them. But they were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. In the 6 day war Israel was surrounded with the purpose of obliteration, the running joke in Israel was "The experiment is over, the last one out turn off the lights" (there are still people living today who remember the level of existential dread this brought). Instead of crumbling Israel attacked and took over the occupied territories. But unlike historic cases it didn't annex them because the Arab population was much larger. This is the source of most of the problems we have today.
Had Israel been an apartheid state or interested in ethnic cleansing the Palestinians would be gone in 67. It wasn't interested in that then and isn't interested in that now although there are people in the extreme right-wing who are pushing for that and getting traction because the attempts at peace failed.
In the occupied territories you could try and argue an apartheid based on that definition. But that's not technically true. It's not a part of Israel and Israel literally left Gaza (removing its citizens) and tried to leave the West bank. There's a problem there for sure, but using existing terms like that is intentionally misleading.
> Since your ancestors are from Morocco, imagine if the Jewish and the Muslim of Morocco in the near future start claiming back Spanish lands by emigrating en mass, and forcefully displacing the local native Spanish just because their ancestors have once lived and ruled Iberian peninsular for several hundreds years. Is this hypothetical situation is fine with you?
Jews came back to Israel when it was ruled by the Ottoman and British empires. Unlike your example, there was no country to "invade". It seems that you accept hate toward immigrants... Are you OK with hate toward other immigrant populations that aren't Jews?
Are you comparing Palestinians to MAGA?
> Fun facts, now Spain is allowing and inviting the expelled Jewish descendants in Morocco to come back to Spain and become Spanish citizen [3]. Why do you think that they're not extending this goodwill offers to Muslim descendents that were also expelled alongside Jewish population from Spain?
This was old news and has ended by now. You should ask the Spain why they didn't provide it to Muslims. I don't see the relevance here. Spain/Portugal etc don't have enough birth rate to sustain population and needs immigration to keep the economy going, this is an incentive for that.
Why do you think this is relevant to the situation in Israel which is radically different in every regard?
This false narrative is the very root cause of the current problems in Israel and Palestinian conflict.
I'm not anti-immigration as you accused me of, far from it but I think you need to accept the fact that emigration en mass to any part of the world is not natural and will definitely causing instability. The situation in Israel cannot be justified similarly as if the Muslim want to emigrate en mass back to Spain. However you never answer my questions what's your personal opinions regarding this similar hypothetical situation?
I'd really appreciate if you can provide the valid references of the verses for the dubious promised land narrative in the Quran and Bibles with respect to modern Israel (not ancient Moses time).
The original promised land narrative was for the Moses Jewish followers at that specific time and it has been fulfilled at that particular time although not without much bruhaha. Ironically it's reported in the Quran that the Jews at the time famously and cowardly refused to enter and fight alongside Moses into Jerusalem and God caused them to be lost in the wilderness for 40 years as a punishment from God [1]. Not until after Moses death that the Jews can later enter Jerusalem for good and any learned Jews should know these very facts.
Another interesting potential fact is that most of the current Palestinians are actually the descendents from the original Jewish people living in the ancient Judea time that have converted to Islam. I think Israel govt can and should check the Palestinian people ancestry based on DNA test accordingly. If that's true it will make the current Israel govt as self-hating Jews or self-hating Semite. Potentially, some of the Palestinians may have higher Jews ancentors percentage from the ancient Judea Jews population than the emigrants themselves. This will be very ironic and very sad situations at the same time, after all these series of deadly conflicts over hundred years. I'd like to know your honest opinions on this matter as well since it's a very highly likely situation.
As for Muslim anything in the Old Testament and New Testament (both directly sent to Jews and not for other races) are dubious in its contents veracity and some of the original verses had been changed illegally to suite the Jewish community. Hebrew as a language is mostly forgotten for several thousands of years and even in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus back in the very 1st CE, the Jerusalem people were speaking Aramaic (a Semitic Syrian language closer to Arabic than Hebrew) [2]. God's words in holy books are not supposed be changed and apparently all previous holy books sent by God (to Jews or other races) were not guaranteed their contents except Quran.
>Third mistake. When Jews started immigrating to Israel they bought lands en-mass. 7% of the land was purchased until Palestinian leaders and the British put a stop to that.
According to reluable sources only a few percents or around less than 3% of land properties were legally bought by the Israel Jewish community from the Palestinians.
But honestly, even if we take your inflated claim of legal land purchases at 7%, do you honestly think the Palestinian would sell the Jews the remainder of the 93% land if the British and the Palestinian authority had not stop the land purchasing exercises?
>In the occupied territories you could try and argue an apartheid based on that definition.
The proof is in the pudding. You can ask the remaining survivors of the apartheid regime from South Africa to visit Gaza and West Bank, and ask them is their apartheid version is worst or better than what the Palestinian are experiencing right now. I cannot recall any incidents where the South Arican black news broadcasting stations, people houses, schools, hospital, house of worships, etc were indiscriminately and systematically decimated from the air by the South African govt at the time. Israel really took the definition of apartheid to the next level /s.
Do you not know that throughout history for over more than a thousand years never ever have any Muslim authorities totally expelled or decimated the Jewish population. This is because together with Christian, Jews are considered and respected as the people of the Books. The same cannot be said to the Nazi and the Spain Inquisition, just to name a few. Not sure you know about this fact, at one time all Jews were banished altogether from the entire British islands and the current Jews now in British Islands are the descendants from later emigrants.
Under the Muslim empires, the Jews not only surviving but were thriving. The fact that Jewish current canonical versions of Jewish holy books or Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, namely the 10th-century medieval Masoretic Text compiled by the Masoretes (currently used in Rabbinic Judaism), were brought back and edited during the Islamic Caliphates period as the Hebrew language has been unspoken for several thousand of years as I've mentioned earlier [2],[3]. If the Muslim authorities want to get rid of the Jews as did the Nazi, the Spanish and the British, it's not certainly beyond their means and capabilities, it's a matter of won't not can't. You are the living proof and testament to this fact since your ancestors were from Morocco where it's a predominantly Muslim community and Jewish community have been continously living in Morocco (and many other muslim majority countries) for more than a thousand years.
I'd strongly suggest you read the The Hundred Years' War on Palestine book, from the academic perspective of the situations. The author Rashid Khalidi is the Editor of the reputable Journal of Palestine Studies based in the US. His relative was once the mayor in Jerusalem a hundred years ago, and the book begins with an examination of correspondence from 1889 between his relative Yusuf Diya ad-Din Pasha al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, and Theodor Herzl, father of modern political Zionism [4],[5].
[1] Musa Reminds His People of Allah's Favors on Them; The Jews Refuse to Enter the Holy Land:
https://quran.com/al-maidah/20/tafsirs
[2] Hebrew language:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language
[3] Hebrew Bible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_Bible
[4] The Hundred Years' War on Palestine:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred_Years%27_War_on_...
[5] A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-ga...
Nope. I asked if you would be as judgemental towards any other ethnic group. Notice that the immigration in question (in massive numbers) happened for the most part in the 19th century. There was a big push when the country was formed but it was related to the existing WW II displacement of population.
> but I think you need to accept the fact that emigration en mass to any part of the world is not natural and will definitely causing instability.
Sure. But it happened. My ancestors didn't have much of a choice and neither do I. It happened and people need to get over it.
> The situation in Israel cannot be justified similarly as if the Muslim want to emigrate en mass back to Spain. However you never answer my questions what's your personal opinions regarding this similar hypothetical situation?
Why would I care about Spain?
You're trying to create a false equivalency and renegotiate history. Those are mute points. I get exactly why the Palestinians didn't want Jews to return to Israel, I don't blame them for that. Did I give a sense that I did?
I also understand why they started the war in 1947/8. It was objectively stupid on their part as history shows.
> I'd really appreciate if you can provide the valid references of the verses for the dubious promised land narrative in the Quran and Bibles with respect to modern Israel (not ancient Moses time).
You must have me confused with someone else. I'm an atheist. I don't give a crap about the promised land and neither do most Israelis. We were born here, it's as simple as that. Our lineage was displaced a lot through history and we don't claim ownership of everything that was stolen from our ancestors.
You're debating as if you're in the 1940s. This debate is mute. Almost all Palestinians were born outside of what is today's Israel and most Israelis were born here.
> Another interesting potential fact is that most of the current Palestinians are actually the descendents from the original Jewish people living in the ancient Judea time that have converted to Islam.
That is nonsense. Since Jews were literally murdered by Romans that would not have been the case. Islam didn't exist at the time. Notice that you're grasping at straws trying to invalidate an entire people, would you feel OK trying to invalidate the history/ethnicity of any other race other than Jews?
> I think Israel govt can and should check the Palestinian people ancestry based on DNA test accordingly.
There is actual DNA relation between Jews and Palestinians, but DNA doesn't work like people think it does. It doesn't tell us anything much. We do call Arabs/Palestinians cousins in Hebrew because religious people do believe we are related and descendants from the same line.
> If that's true it will make the current Israel govt as self-hating Jews or self-hating Semite.
Nope. Not a thing.
> Potentially, some of the Palestinians may have higher Jews ancentors percentage from the ancient Judea Jews population than the emigrants themselves.
There is no way of knowing that. What we do know is where some Palestinians came from and its often Sudan, Yemen etc. There's a strong genetic connection between them and the north African/Yemenite population though... A huge amount of them were work immigrants who came to the region in the 1920's and encouraged by the local population as a contrast to the Jewish immigration. This goes both ways.
> According to reluable sources only a few percents or around less than 3% of land properties were legally bought by the Israel Jewish community from the Palestinians.
Wikipedia says 6.6% and it's generally very anti-Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_Palest...
Your mistake is that you assumed incorrectly that Palestinians owned the land. They did not, half of the land was purchased from other owners.
> But honestly, even if we take your inflated claim of legal land purchases at 7%, do you honestly think the Palestinian would sell the Jews the remainder of the 93% land if the British and the Palestinian authority had not stop the land purchasing exercises?
Again no. You assume Palestinians owned the other 93% of the land which again isn't how territories work. The number is much much lower. Most of the ownership was by public land, churches, mosques, etc. The actual number is open to debate but is indeed in the 40+ percent. Here's the thing: most of it wasn't in the area where Israel was originally formed. Even after 1947, most of the Palestinians were still on their owned land. In fact, they often still are if they didn't run away during the war.
I agree it's terrible that people got displaced and lost their land. Hell, it happened to my family dozens of times. It sucks. But I don't expect to go back to Morocco, Lativa, Germany (the list goes on) and ask for the lands back. Its gone.
> I cannot recall any incidents where the South Arican black news broadcasting stations, people houses, schools, hospital, house of worships, etc were indiscriminately and systematically decimated from the air by the South African govt at the time.
You're again confusing Gaza and the West bank. It seems there's too much information for you to process.
Gaza is on its own. That's a war.
The west-bank is where I would argue there's a far more severe problem. Unfortunately, the government is using the mess in Gaza to make matters worse in the west-bank.
> Do you not know that throughout history for over more than a thousand years never ever have any Muslim authorities totally expelled or decimated the Jewish population.
That is far from accurate but the point is true that Christians have been far more murderous towards Jews in history. That's part of why we're paranoid and rightly so.
Just to correct the false narrative I suggest looking up: Almohad Caliphate (12th century). Orphans Decree under Zaydi Imams in Yemen (20th century) and Mawza Exile in the 17th century. Allahdad Incident 1839 in Persia and Safavid Era Forced Islamization in the 17th century (and another incident in the 14th century). In Morocco through many centuries and as late as 1790 there was forced conversion.
But yes, the Christians were far worse. This is all before the formation of Israel when things got really bad and Jews had to escape.
> I'd strongly suggest you read the The Hundred Years' War on Palestine book
What makes you think I haven't read that and countless others on the subject?
I'm amazed that you're trying to explain my history to me and assume we don't all know this stuff. We live this stuff every day and are exposed to the "other side". I'd argue that you are not, you think of this entire conflict in simplistic two dimensional terms. You overweight facts that have absolutely no relevance to the current situation and mix two completely different situations/narratives. You also look at the situation in the completely wrong way.
This isn't about Palestinians vs. Jews/Israelis. It's about moderates vs. extremists. The moderates are a huge majority here and just want peace/compromise. However, extremists keep burning everything down and forcing us into conflict that we don't want.
Hamas is a death cult, it will never surrender its purpose to destroy Israel. If it survives it might be able to strike a blow that will give the extreme right in Israel the power to do the unthinkable.
The problem is that most westerners are acting as chaos agents by providing unintentional support for Hamas. This strengthens the Israeli right-wing and is ultimately bad for the moderates on both sides, but mostly bad for the Palestinians. Those are the facts that you're conveniently ignoring.
> Nope. I asked if you would be as judgemental towards any other ethnic group.
The following is your own statement that accusing me of anti-immigrant but you later denying this very fact.
> It seems that you accept hate toward immigrants...
For the record I don't accept hate toward immigrants because if that the case I'd be anti-immigrants and anti-immigration, but I'm against emigration en mass into one particular region especially if the immigrants are mainly from a single race ethnicity as happened and still happening in Israel displacing the native population.
Do you know and realize that despite Palestinian population is very much less than the Israel population, but consistently every year there are more Palestinians were killed by the conflict than the Israel citizens that were killed every year because of the conflict?
In addition to that, despite the the claim of Israel govt of only specifically targeting Hamas fighters, every time there is fresh conflict it always the news agency building are being targetted first in early stage of the conflict, and killing many journalists in the building. Do you not know that killing the journalists and messengers are the hallmark of a tyrant? Apparently Jews are well known of killing many of their very own messengers and prophets including the infamous prophet John incident.
On top of that during most Israel - Palestinian conflicts the majority of the killed casualties (not to include the injured Palestinians) are mostly Palestinian women and children. These cruel and inhuman activities are apartheid in nature and is borderline genocide. That's why in my first reply to you in this thread is that why you're very much adamant in backing the Israel govt in justifying their inhuman actions.
I think you and the the Jewish people in Israel are trying to play victims here. Jewish people throughout history are also known to be the oppressors when they're in authority, and for example one of them is well documented. Reportedly the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas in Yemen was oppressing against the Christians before the advent of Islam, the incident happened near Najran, near the modern Saudi and Yemen border [1]. This story is well documented in Roman/Byzantine chronicles and even recorded in the Quran inside the Surah Al-Buruj [2]. Perhaps your wife can share this true story to you since she's originally from Yemen. My point is that Jews should not acting innocent because history has proven that they are as capable as other people to perform hideous oppression, tyranny and genocide. In fact in the Quran (in addition to Dhu Nuwas incident), the Jewish people was specifically mentioned to be the oppressors of two incidents before being crushed twice by other empires as direct punishments from God [3].
>The moderates are a huge majority here and just want peace/compromise.
As a fellow human being, my personal advice for you is that you should migrate to somewhere else with your family for not being caught in the crossfire. Since you're not religious Jews, I've bad news for you because the trend is that the Israel Jewish population are becoming more and more Orthodox everyday. This fact has been prophesized in reputable (sahih) Islamic traditions and based on the latest documentaries that I watched on Israel, this is also the case.
I'll not continue this thread anymore since I think I've mentioned and conveyed my points on the matter as an outsider. But you as insider of the conflict you know better than me to make the correct and wise decisions regarding the situations. I sincerely hope the best for you and family, as human we only live temporarily in this world and might as well get the best version of it. For religious people, they even have these extra realization and consciousness that if they committed any good or bad things in this world based on their own free will, they'll be rewarded in fairness accordingly both in this world and hereafter.
[1] Dhu Nuwas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhu_Nuwas
[2] Surah Al-Buruj (85):
[3] Quran, Surah Al-Isra (17), verses 4 - 8:
17 - 4: And We warned the Children of Israel in the Scripture, “You will certainly cause corruption in the land twice, and you will become extremely arrogant."
17 - 5: When the first of the two warnings would come to pass, We would send against you some of Our servants of great might, who would ravage your homes. This would be a warning fulfilled.
17 - 6: Then (after your repentance) We would give you the upper hand over them and aid you with wealth and offspring, causing you to outnumber them.
17 - 7: If you act rightly, it is for your own good, but if you do wrong, it is to your own loss. And when the second warning would come to pass, your enemies would (be left to) totally disgrace you and enter that place of worship as they entered it the first time, and utterly destroy whatever would fall into their hands.
17 - 8: Perhaps your Lord will have mercy on you (if you repent), but if you return (to sin), We will return (to punishment). And We have made Hell a (permanent) confinement for the disbelievers.
> 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.
I don't think it is. When your family and life is threatened you make different choices. This is the definition of war not genocide which is deliberate.
> 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
I tend to agree. Israeli liberalism is perceived as detached "do gooders" who live in a bubble.
> and they're pushing for genocide
That's in the very edge and they're mostly pushing to ethnic cleansing which means "relocating" the Palestinians to Jordan/Egypt. That is obviously stupid and unworkable. It won't solve any problem and will make things worse.
> 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
Yep. It's pretty horrific and when it gets reported in local media the commenters gang up on them being "anti-Israel" and "self hating Jews".
Recently an Arab village was hit by an Iranian rocket and women died as a result of that. Some people online celebrated that disaster which was indeed horrific. Luckily, we're still not there. The overwhelming consensus attacked those a*holes. But 20-30 years ago it wouldn't have been as bad.
This goes both ways. People in Palestinian villages watch the rockets landing in Israel and celebrate that too. Unfortunately, people in the right encourage that level of hate and use it as a tool.
> one was that Fatah was viewed as broadly corrupt and ineffective
Yes. I know. They also didn't get an absolute majority etc. I get that.
But for many Israelis it was a watershed moment, they had a choice and they chose wrong.
> 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.
That is a misdirection. They used a similar tactic prior to October 7th: https://www.timesofisrael.com/before-oct-7-idf-probe-shows-h...
Israel was attacked by Islamic Jihad a bit earlier and Hamas very explicitly stood down. They wanted to facilitate a sense within Israel that they are interested in calming things down. Due to that Israel ignored intelligence that showed the preparation for October 7th.
> 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
Hopefully... I tend to be an optimist although it is challenging sometimes.
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.
> Probably. But assuming it does, did it ever threaten anyone with it even when it was under attack? Nope.
It's not a "probably". It's in Wikileaks emails from Colin Powell. https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-leaked-emails-colin-powell-...
Plus anyone in the DoD with an elevated clearance can read US intel info about various aspects of the Israeli WMD program in surprising detail, which I won't elaborate on here.
As for threats, have you not heard of the Samson Option? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_option#Martin_van_Creve...
> Again. Not murdering civilians, you have no concept of what war is.
Twenty years of military service, and I've worked with Fallujah veterans. Even we in the notoriously heavy-handed Marine Corps somehow manage to not annihilate as many families as the IDF does in Gaza. Don't think we have a systemic history of using human shields either: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-arm...
> They are the trigger, training and a major driver for the October 7th attacks.
The world didn't start on October 7th. How many Palestinians were killed by the IDF prior to October 7th? This is from 4 months earlier than that event: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/israel-opt-ci...
And from 2019: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justifica...
> In a war zone people don't carry flashy signs indicating their civilian status.
A responsible military would establish Rules of Engagement that assumes people are civilians, and only opens fire when there are CLEAR indications of a threat (visual confirmation of weapons, incoming fire of clear origin, etc...). It helps keep you from shooting your own hostages because you mistook them for unarmed Palestinians, for example.
> You say don't kill civilians, which school of urban warfare did you study in?
I've been an infantryman in the US National Guard and an officer in the United States Marine Corps. I know what it's like to be expected to clear rooms while only having Reservist-level training (like most of the mobilized IDF ground forces). We were fortunate because we had a bunch of prior Active Duty NCOs (with both Army and Marine combat vets) who were experienced and understood restraint. Working as an Aviation C2 officer, I understand the killchain of air support missions, which is why I'm highly critical of how much ordnance is landing on the heads of entire families. The Israeli air force has a reputation for competence, so the only rational explanation is malevolence.
> If Israel can fly fewer missions it would just have to make every bombing count.
The implication in this statement is that you aren't making every sortie count now....which is coherent with the conclusion that you are bombing the population as punishment, not judiciously targeting actual military threats.
> The amount of aid in these flotillas is minuscule. They are for show only.
It's not the quantity of aid that is significant, it is the purpose, process, and optics of aid delivery. Members of the international community are attempting to relieve human suffering, and you are boarding their ships, shooting them, and attacking them with drones. That is objectively evil.
> The problem I have with people like yourself is that you have a lot of criticism but no actual solutions.
We have a lot of criticism because you are killing women and children using OUR taxpayer dollars, protected by OUR diplomatic influence with the UN/ICC/etc. We've presented solutions: a one-state solution with complete emancipation for the Palestinian population. The problem is the Jewish demographic refuses to accept this, because population trends will soon lead to Jews becoming a minority, which the Jewish population, traumatized by a history of persecution, refuses to accept.
Plan B would be to lift the Gaza Blockade and allow foreign investment to build up Gaza's transport links and offshore natural gas resources, so the Palestinians have sovereign control of their economic development. Also completely halt West Bank settlement expansion. Combine this with expanded UN peacekeeping patrols (maybe some sort of joint patrols, with one European Christian and one Pakistani/Indonesia/etc. Muslim) to try to keep violence to a minimum until both sides get past their collective traumas.
>Leave Gaza: tried that before. That's how we got here.
You removed your ground troops, but you destroyed the Gaza airport before you left (why?), destroyed the foundations of the Gaza seaport as well (why?), and as you said insist on maintaining a maritime blockade. The population has no transportation links to establish meaningful trade relationships and economic prosperity. The young men who make up the backbone of Hamas foot soldiers circa 2023 were probably all the children you traumatized in ~2006. That's how you got here.
> 1. Killing members of the group; - Israel doesn't satisfy that criteria.
> I didn't do this, Hamas did it.
I'm honestly glad that you engage online. I think it is important for as many eyes as possible to see into the thought processes and state of mind of the apparently moderate Israeli demographic. Because you guys come across as total fucking psychopaths, with NO sense of introspection whatsoever. I work with Marines who have fought house-to-house in Iraq and Afghanistan and they are more well-adjusted and humane that what I hear from the average Israeli internet commenter, even on a fairly "enlightened" site such as HN (this place isn't a dumpster fire like Reddit or 4Chan).
> Twenty years of military service, and I've worked with Fallujah veterans. Even we in the notoriously heavy-handed Marine Corps somehow manage to not annihilate as many families as the IDF does in Gaza. Don't think we have a systemic history of using human shields either: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-arm...
That's interesting. It's also missing a few very important details.
Israel was never this violent prior to Oct 7th. Things escalated and Israel wasn't the one who started the escalation.
Unlike America who can just break the middle east and leave, Israel has to stay. Your guys destroyed Afghanistan and then blamed the Afghani people for "not fighting for themselves". Israel tried to fight this gently and morally, and a lot of Israelis see that as a failure.
The main problem here is that there's widespread Muslim delusion surrounding Israel. In early 2024 a missile hit my home (not much happened thanks to Iron Dome) I posted a photo on LinkedIn and got confronted by a Moroccan living in Europe. We had a lively albeit heated discussion similar to the one I'm having with you.
He was sure that all Israelis will "run back to Europe" and kind of fumbled when he found out my ancestry is Moroccan too (he was pretty sure they were great to Jews, which admittedly they weren't that bad). But he was adamant that within 5 years Israel will be gone. Cease to exist. I asked him if it's legitimate to wish for the death of me and my family which is something he avoided.
There's widespread delusion within the Arab world that Israel will topple. Even supposedly intelligent western Muslims are influenced by this delusion. They have an image of the country that doesn't represent it in any way.
Add to that the justified Israeli paranoia e.g. in the 1950's the UK drafted plans to bomb Israeli airbases and leave Israel without defense against its enemies. If Israel were wiped out in any time during its existence the Jews would end up like the Armenians. Fed. We're seeing this in the states right now where the hate towards Israel is one of the few bipartisan issues. We saw America abandon allies in the past.
> The world didn't start on October 7th. How many Palestinians were killed by the IDF prior to October 7th? This is from 4 months earlier than that event: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/06/israel-opt-ci...
Sure. How many Israelis were killed by Hamas and similar terrorist groups?
Prior to Oct 7th Israel tried to be more surgical when targeting terrorists. That worked. The PLO was a deadly organization that murdered children, hijacked planes and killed athletes at the Olympics. Israel was deeply violent chasing them to Lebanon and Tunis. That broke them. They finally understood that Israel will never surrender and took up the low bar of recognizing its right to exist/stop terrorism.
That led to the one positive thing in Palestinian history: The Oslo accords.
But Hamas couldn't have that and sabotaged that with help from the extreme Israeli right-wing.
This can't be solved by peaceful means, as much as I want that. In order to have peace we need to also stop the people who are trying actively to sabotage the peace and we also need to squash that delusion that Israel could collapse.
> Working as an Aviation C2 officer, I understand the killchain of air support missions, which is why I'm highly critical of how much ordnance is landing on the heads of entire families. The Israeli air force has a reputation for competence, so the only rational explanation is malevolence.
The assumption your making is about civilian death ratios published by Hamas controlled sources. The fact that other organizations put their stamp of approval on these sources doesn't make them true. Israel doesn't publish numbers since it's impossible to get them accurately, but they estimate a ratio of 1 to 1 in terms of civilian casualties which is far better than what any US campaign ever achieved.
Here's a countryman of yours with a different take on this: https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...
> The implication in this statement is that you aren't making every sortie count now....which is coherent with the conclusion that you are bombing the population as punishment, not judiciously targeting actual military threats.
Israel is using more accurate smaller bombs right now. Are some decisions made by soldiers biased and vengeful, sure. I mean Abu Ghraib didn't appear out of a void and Israel still is a country of laws, it prosecutes war crimes. Yes, the current right-wing government is terrible in that regard and tries to sabotage due process/military standards. But the army is still a separate branch with its own chain of command and judicial oversight. Every airstrike is reviewed, by oversight and requires justification.
I can see why the level of destruction is terrible, but I also understand the necessity. Imagine as a soldier walking into a neighborhood with snipers in every building. The army chose the brute force approach in many cases to reduce casualties.
> It's not the quantity of aid that is significant, it is the purpose, process, and optics of aid delivery.
I agree that holding the food trucks was terrible. No excuse, even if it helps Hamas that was a terrible call. The floatila nonsense was just constructed to make Israel look bad on social media. It was stupid to begin with.
> Members of the international community are attempting to relieve human suffering
They are not. They are virtue signaling which is a very different thing. Ultimately they are only increasing hostility and making it harder for everyone.
Greta Thunberg is the perfect example of a person who celebrated Oct 7th right after it happened. The way we see it is that no one gives a fck about dead Israelis. The problem is that the moment she put herself as the person who's for "bringing aid" she made the whole thing toxic. That means that when we say we want aid to go in we're on "her side". She damaged the cause rather than helped in the name of social media "likes".
> and you are boarding their ships, shooting them, and attacking them with drones.
You're mixing several different floatila's. The first one had armed personnel trying to break a legal blockade. They shot Israeli soldiers and found out. That was legitimate.
The drone thing tried to prevent a similar occurrence. No one was hurt and the message was received.
The latest floatilla was just stupid social media idiots. They got due process and a flight back home. Those who want their day in court will get due process like everyone.
It looks bad, but it's people trying to make Israel look bad. Not an objectively bad or evil thing.
> We have a lot of criticism because you are killing women and children
Not actually true. The ratio of women/children is faked.
> using OUR taxpayer dollars, protected by OUR diplomatic influence with the UN/ICC/etc.
That's partially true. Yes, Israel does get US aid which is given in the form of "store credit". It provides a lot in return for the financial/political aid. In fact the whole situation in Gaza is because of you guys...
In 2005 Bush pressured Israel to leave Gaza and clear the settlements. It did just that because of your political pressure. The results of that terrible decision are in front of us right now. For the past two decades Israel didn't re-invade fully despite constant escalation and rockets. Again, the reason is pressure from the USA not to do anything too harsh.
Removing US aid and international support will be a terrible problem to Israel. That is literally what Hamas wants. The problem is that this would imply that the leash is truly off. It would send Israel to the extreme right and would probably create a "shock and awe" scenario for Palestinians.
I hope the US aid stays but I'm pretty sure it will be gone within a decade. I hope we can have peace before that happens.
> We've presented solutions: a one-state solution with complete emancipation for the Palestinian population.
That is the one thing no one wants and is literally the worst idea ever!
Israel has a large Muslim population, but it's a secular state with an ethnically Jewish majority. It is not a colonialist state since it was formed by migration and war, not by a colonial empire.
Lebanon OTOH was formed by the colonial empires as a "fantasy land" based on their lack of understanding in the region. The result was decades of civil war and a failed state due to the diversity of the populace. Syria was another colonial state that slid into a similar situation more recently. Without the Assad family killing all opponents Syria is a damn mess.
A single state is a ridiculous colonial level thinking. We differ too much on a cultural level.
> The problem is the Jewish demographic refuses to accept this, because population trends will soon lead to Jews becoming a minority, which the Jewish population, traumatized by a history of persecution, refuses to accept.
Palestinians don't want it either. You're wrong about the population trends as the fastest growing population in Israel is Hasidic Jews.
> Plan B would be to lift the Gaza Blockade and allow foreign investment to build up Gaza's transport links and offshore natural gas resources
The "give them money for peace" is the exact strategy we tried for the past few decades. Literally gave them suitcases of cash. Hamas leadership hold billions which they steal from their own people, living it up in Qatar.
Before Oct 7th I was working with guys from Gaza. Lots of tech companies in Israel (including Nvidia) were working with people from there. There are great people there. But as long as Hamas exists this sort of strategy just won't work. They will pretend to be onboard and will use that to arm up.
You can't remove a blockade of someone who actively says they want to kill you.
> Combine this with expanded UN peacekeeping patrols (maybe some sort of joint patrols, with one European Christian and one Pakistani/Indonesia/etc. Muslim) to try to keep violence to a minimum until both sides get past their collective traumas.
You mean the UN troops that stood in Lebanon for a year while Hezbolla fired rockets into Israel constantly?
You mean the UN troops who had Hezbolla tunnels dug under their bases and firing posts right in-front of their bases?
Or do you mean the UN troops who held Hamas weapon caches in their offices. Who taught schoolchildren that committing suicide bombings against Israelis will send them to heaven?
Those UN troops?
Sure. The UN is a great body for most countries on earth. Except Israel. The UN came up with more anti-Israel resolutions than all other countries combined. That includes Russia, Saudis, Sudan, NK etc. Israel is apparently worse than all of them. So no, we won't get a fair deal from the UN.
> You removed your ground troops, but you destroyed the Gaza airport before you left (why?), destroyed the foundations of the Gaza seaport as well (why?),
Imagine October 7th with proper weapons and tanks. That's why. Israel left unilaterally due to US pressure. There was no peace deal. The fact is that had Israel not done these things everything would have been so much worse.
> The population has no transportation links to establish meaningful trade relationships and economic prosperity.
That is not true. In the past you could get whatever you wanted in Gaza it just had to go through Israel for security reasons. They still made rockets out of construction pipes.
The problem is that you're confusing two things, the normal people in Gaza who just want to live... For them economic prosperity is great. And the psychos from Hamas who won't be swayed by anything.
You think that people get radicalized by harsh times, that's true. But no amount of economic prosperity will sway Hamas. That is a deep misunderstanding of who they are and their mindset. Bin Laden had all the money in the world and chose to do the terrible things he did. That is not an isolated case. Sinwar was in Israeli prison for murdering other Palestinians (had a guy bury his brother alive with a spoon), he had cancer and Israel cured him then released him.
Still he led the October 7th attacks as he saw that as a weakness. These guys are not "normal". They are a fanatic death cult. The problem is that the people hurt the most by them are the Palestinian people. The only hope the Palestinian people have is if Hamas is destroyed as completely and thoroughly as possible.
> The young men who make up the backbone of Hamas foot soldiers circa 2023 were probably all the children you traumatized in ~2006. That's how you got here.
100% and we're making more of them right now arguably.
You incorrectly assume though that if we stop that will reverse the situation. It will not. It will just happen again and will be FAR worse. The only way out of this is through to the other side. Notice that I'm not in favor of that anymore, I've already resigned myself to the fact that Hamas won't be defeated in this round and that we will probably have a followup clash with Hamas. But next time it will be far more deadly.
> I work with Marines who have fought house-to-house in Iraq and Afghanistan and they are more well-adjusted and humane that what I hear from the average Israeli internet commenter, even on a fairly "enlightened" site such as HN (this place isn't a dumpster fire like Reddit or 4Chan).
Separate Internet comments from the general populace and the soldiers in the field. But I also don't think it's fair to compare our situation to US soldiers.
It's a small country. To put it in perspective the scale of death on Oct 7th is comparable to a 9/11 that killed more than 40k people. We all know someone who died on Oct 7th. Everyone. We all know someone hurt by terrorism. Everyone. It's very personal when you keep running with your kids to shelters and when their earliest memories are of missiles flying overhead.
We all served in the army. Whenever a soldier dies it's the death of a child or a friend. My kids are too young for Army conscription but it's the thing that keeps me up at night more than anything. I don't want them to be a part of an endless war, if there's a risk to soldiers we get the fire first ask later mentality.
Israelis see this as "we tried to do the right thing". We tried to give them a country, we tried peace and signed peace accords with multiple countries (we gave back territory 3x the size of Israel for peace).
But then we get hate online and we take it very personally. Especially when Jews parrot Hamas narrative. That hurts and pushes a lot of Israelis further to the right.
We're also still under deep national trauma that we can't heal. 52 Israelis are still held in Gaza and we feel the absence of every hostage deeply. My spouse would sit with the families of hostages every week until she just broke down mentally. There's a Hebrew saying: Don't judge a man in sorrow.
Our entire nation is in trauma and isn't acting rationally. When you had a similar national trauma you demolished two middle eastern countries and contributed to the current situation.
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.
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.
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?
Yes, there is a subset of evangelicals that think along those lines. But not all of us.
Still 80 != 100, and not all evangelicals are white males. Alienating the reasonable evangelicals isn’t going to help fix stuff.
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 else in this thread seems to have understood it was not a blanket statement.
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.
Did I? No. Because I thought that was not necessary when the response was in context about a specific group of people already: evangelicals who support Israel. Those who would understand what my remark was referring to, would already know that these evangelicals are a specific set; hence I saw no need to qualify it.
When Rick asked me for clarification twice if I meant that as a generalization, I said in clear terms that I did not.
If someone knows about these tendencies among the evangelicals, they would have the requisite knowledge to know it is not held among all evangelicals.
So if what I said was meant to be a joke, then it was more of an "in joke." But I didn't mean it as a joke, as much as I meant it as, I admit, a reactionary opening to discussing about this specific group's influence on US politics. But now I see that possibility was derailed, because reactionary responses only birth the same.
I am not offended. And, I love you too.
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.
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.
I can see the issue with the “changed their mind” comment. Of course armageddon accelerationist evangelicals aren’t going to change their minds, that position comes from deeply held convictions and values that are for many inextricable from their faith. To suggest that they would abandon their enthusiasm for the coming of the savior and the age of messianic peace that he brings with him is kind of dismissive of how seriously evangelicals take the topic of the second coming.
Conversely, the complaint about the enthusiasm about the timing of the return of Christ is kind of a head scratcher for me. You seem to assert that Jesus’ return is fundamental to your beliefs but you personally would prefer that he arrives later. Like it is important and central to your faith but it is also offensively presumptive to assert that anybody would actually want it to happen.
It is kind of like you are simultaneously complaining that he is taking the evangelical position on the second coming both too seriously and not seriously enough.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why would Iran do something so suicidal?
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.
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.
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.
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.
They may be religious fanatics, but they’re not idiots.
"You made a deal that disadvantages us so we're going to rape and murder a bunch of teenagers and kidnap people."
Sure, it's an explanation. Everything shitty Israel or Hamas has done since 1950 has an "explanation" of "that other group did something to me".
https://www.yahoo.com/news/irans-foreign-minister-says-no-10...
"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.
Nukes among peers aren't there to be used. They are there to immobilize and freeze a layer of conflict.
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
- 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
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
it's not for lack of trying
With less snark, this will only end peacefully as soon as possible with some diplomacy, or in a massive humanitarian disaster.
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"
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.
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!"
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.
I'm positive there's some selection bias here - ultra-nationalists don't hang out with other races.
But it goes with what we've been saying about bloodlust and dehumanization. The most excited ones are the ones who don't live anywhere near there.
The relevant question is: Why was it necessary to bomb Iran right now?
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-...
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.
Wouldn't Russia or Venezuela take up the slack.
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?!?
Countries run by dictators need an external enemy to paint as the cause for problems.
> 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.
Isn't an act of congress required for this, in the US?
_We_ do special operations, interventions, liberations, preventive strikes, weapon destructions.
In fact, it may never have actually existed.
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.
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.
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).
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?
The War Powers Act of 1973 was approved literally to avoid it happening in the future.
Yes, but when only when you really need to go to a full wartime economy. Otherwise is just business as usual.
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.
Also selling oil will only work for a few more decades before people stop buying. It isn't sustainable anymore
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...
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.
Whether or not any of that is justified is another question, arguably long since expired. Strategic arms reduction is a two-way road, it requires transparency and genuine humility from both parties at the table. It's why Reagan could never secure his deal from Gorbachev, and it's why Trump won't reach a deal playing "mad gunman" with the B-2.
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.-
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.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/22/nx-s1-5441734/satellites-show...
> "The program has been seriously set back, but there's a lot of odds and ends," Albright says. Ultimately he thinks the only way to truly end Iran's nuclear program is through additional nuclear inspections by international monitors and cooperation from the Iranian regime, probably through some kind of diplomatic agreement.
Weird, kinda like what we had with the Iran Nuclear Deal that our president pulled us out of.
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.
Right now? Not that we know of.
Historically? Yes.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/meet-oklo-the-earths-tw...
> A key factor that made the reaction possible was that [back then] the fissile isotope ²³⁵U made up about 3.1% of the natural uranium, which is comparable to the amount used in some of today's reactors.
[citation needed]
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 ?
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
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.
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.
Did Ukraine do such things to Russia?
US has intervened at times but it is a democracy, administrations come and go. They shook off McCarthyism. To my knowledge, the US has not expressed the will to wipe off a population.
Only street laws and rules apply to them. They see negotiations as weakness, nothing more. History proved many times - you don't negotiate with tyrans and bloody dictators. Period.
If you have enough brain to crack leetcode puzzles, why can't you nail that?
by countries that already have nuclear bombs.
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)
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.
And now, assuming this sets their program back 10-20 years, what will the answer to that question be?
Has anyone seen any analysis on this? It feels like maybe the nuke might be less of a deterrent than threatening to acquire one because using it would put you in a MAD situation where your ballistic missle might malfunction???
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?)
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.
He’s a career con artist, that’s what’s going on.
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.
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.
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.
Dump: I hired the greatest WOMAN that has ever lived to dismantle you deep state losers on day 1
Deep state: Sir, it is day 200
Dump: buy my son's phone, you can buy $TRUMP coin directly from us, any time of the day or night
- 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.
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.
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...
2) This was before our war with Canada and just after our Quasi-war with France.
Libya is nowhere near the Middle East. It's not even the Near East. It's in northern Africa.
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.
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.
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.
Looking forward to the strait of Hormuz shutting down...
China is the only country that can help Iran.
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).
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...
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.
SAVAK was established in 1967 with help from both the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad.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.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/17/trump-iran-i...
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.
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.
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
So from a regime leader point of view, it's better to have a nuclear weapon than not have it. For a member of the population it's probably a good idea to stay away from it.
deterrence works. we should admit it
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 US convinced Ukraine to give up its nukes and return them to Russia. Russia was supposed to never attack in exchange.
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 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.
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.
9 countries exist. So much for self-determination.
Iran having nukes would mean peace in the Middle East.
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 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.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/2002/09/12/Netanyahu-US-should-...
As for your claim about Israel “invading minds and culture,” that’s just wild conspiracy nonsense. Israel’s strikes hit the regime’s military, not our culture. You’re dodging the real issue: the mullahs’ 45 years of killing, oppressing, and ruining lives. Where’s your outrage for that? Instead, you’re twisting things to sound clever. Try focusing on the actual problem—the regime—before throwing shade at me for hoping they fall.
You say Israel and the U.S. attacked “our land.” Wrong. They hit the regime’s military and leaders, not our culture or people. You bring up Libya, Syria, Iraq—sure, those were messes. But the mullahs are already destroying Iran: no freedom, no jobs, no hope. You want me to stay quiet while they ruin us? No way. I’m not cheering for Israel or the U.S.—I’m cheering for the end of the mullahs. If strikes weaken them, good.
You talk about pride in Cyrus, Darius, and Reza Shah. Where’s your pride in fighting a regime that shames our 3,000-year history? They’ve made Iran a prison, not a great nation. You say negotiations were happening? The regime’s negotiators and scientists were killed—how’s that for wanting peace?
You call me naive, but you’re the one ignoring the truth. The regime’s enemies aren’t attacking our soul—they’re hitting the mullahs. I’m not siding with Israel or the U.S.; I’m siding with Iranians who want freedom. If you think defending the regime saves our honor, you’ve lost yours.
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.
He has betrayed his core by letting Israel suck our country into another Middle Eastern conflict, after promising to do the opposite.
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.
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).
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'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.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics
The news of the US entering a war, with a first-strike major bombing, is extremely serious.
Air strikes do not constitute boots on the ground, and the rules based norms around "you break it, you own it" ended with the last flight from Kabul. Most likely, we will conduct bombing raids, but take no part in nation building.
Ironically, South Korea wanted to do this to North Korea in 2003 (edit: 1993-94), but the Bush (edit: Clinton) administration pushed back because they were concentrating on Iraq and Afghanistan (edit: Yugoslavia).
Edit 1:
Nuclear weapons ALONE do not act as a deterrent anymore. Most nuclear countries have second/third strike capabilities and nuclear triad capabilities.
This is something that Iran has been working on for decades with a fairly robust ballistics and cruise missile program, and attempts at building a domestic nuclear submarine program.
More critically, just about every regional power in the Middle East has been investing in similar capabilities in case an Iran breakout happens. Going from 1 additonal country with nuclear weapons to 3-4 leads to a cascading domino effect (a nuclear Iran means a nuclear Saudi means a nuclear Turkiye means a nuclear Egypt...)
Edit 2:
For the downvoters - a country who's leadership explicitly chants "مرگ بر آمریکا" (Death to America) will unsurprisingly be viewed as a threat. Even our large rivals China or Russia do not normalize that kind of rhetoric.
You need to have delivery mechanisms like medium/long range ballistic missiles and second strike capabilities like SLCMs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> And America are not in a war with Iran
Bombing a country's nuclear infrastructure is surely an act of war.
We're going to see a big turn from Israel in the West. Boomers are absolutely obsessed with the place but the younger generations aren't. Netanyahu throwing his lot in with Trump means that Israel will become a partisan issue. Europeans already have mostly turned against Israel: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/03/public-support...
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).
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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
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
There are many allies of the US, still they are not exempt from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). I'm not sure if it's a sane strategy to permit a single ally who has never signed the NPT [1] to build nuclear weapons, unlike your many other allies or non-allies:
> The roots of this preferential treatment go back to a secret 1969 understanding between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. The agreement essentially allowed Israel to keep its nuclear weapons as long as it remained silent about them and avoided nuclear tests. That bargain has held ever since, with successive U.S. administrations turning a blind eye to what would be a clear violation of international norms if committed by any other state.
Causing a power imbalance in the region doesn't seem the right way to keep peace.
[1] https://www.eurasiareview.com/23062025-israels-nuclear-ambig...
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.
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...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei%27s_fatwa_against...
The third temple's holy of holies : Israel's nuclear weapons
* 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?"
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 ?
Thanks for calling, goodnight.
Then, they wouldn't be organized enough to build a nuclear weapon. That would be a better outcome.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hard to see this being achievable over a just a couple of years if at all.
> 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.
- 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Even despite Trump, I think the US and many western countries have actual friends that would show up if bad things happened.
Well the prime minister who was elected promising not to bend the knee to Trump has bent the knee to trump.
It looks like it might even be Iran.
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.
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.
This hasn't aged well...unsurprisingly
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 Kim can get nukes, Khomeini can gets nukes.
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.
Perceptions of trustworthiness and rationality are orthogonal to a nation's incentives to acquire nukes.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
1983 Granada 1989 Panama 2011 Libya 2012 Syria
The 1990s actions in Yugoslavia were done without fall declaration of war, but Congress was more fully engaged in saying no at least.
The 1991 war against Iraq was approved, in part, because the administration allowed a witness to flat out lie to Congress about the horrors of the Iraq invasion of Kuwait.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was approved, in part, because the administration lied to Congress about weapons of mass destruction.
I mentioned these last two because they make a mockery of the act itself, or of the US congress, or both...
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
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.
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-...
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.
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.
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.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7864/j.ctt6wpgvg
"CHAPTER FIVE Leave it to Bibi: Allowing or Encouraging an Israeli Military Strike"
Copy and paste this nonsense argument for Iraq 3 trillion dollars ago.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Feels a little bit narcissistic.
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.
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.
Additionally, military operations are terrible for the climate. The US military is (was?) responsible for more pollution/emissions than most countries, for instance.
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.
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)
> ... 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...
> 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.
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.
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dhs-thomas-fugate-c...
Joking ofc, but any oil price spike will have more impact that policy changes at this point.
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.
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.
> 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.
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."
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.
Countries without nukes get victimized by countries with nukes. If you haven't noticed this pattern yet, there's not much hope for you.
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.
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.
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
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...
There are solutions other than war to nonproliferation.
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.
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.
> 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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
https://govfacts.org/explainer/declaration-of-war-vs-authori...
watch as the US is now dragged into 10-20 years of war in the middle east again.
(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.
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://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44341958
Here's the interesting wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit
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.
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.
I have no idea what you are even referring to. I am specifically talking about anti-war sentiment from Trump's base (which is not the same as Republicans). It has been consistent over the last 9 years.
> But if you can't extend this much good faith to me, we have nothing to discuss. Good day.
You literally did the routine that I specifically complained about in my original comment. Why should I extend to you any good faith? I specifically said I was tired of it and didn't want to hear it.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/survey-results...
> Do you approve or disapprove of the U.S. bombing nuclear sites in Iran?
Republicans say:
Strongly approve 46%
Somewhat approve 22%
Somewhat disapprove 5%
Strongly disapprove 8%
Not sure 18%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.
I will admit I am a bit of a politico, I see myself as the equivalent of someone betting on horses or dogs.
Generally I do the following:
- It is pretty easy to spot botted accounts both on YouTube and Twitter. Especially on YouTube. You will typically get a lot of real sounding names and real looking avatars that almost say exactly the same thing, along with a fake conversation as replies. These bots aren't using advanced AI. They can be bought quite cheaply actually.
- I also talk to a lot of people both in left and right leaning Discord groups. The consensus to anyone that isn't a complete die-hard is "MAGA has jumped the shark".
- There are lower level commentators who represent maybe few tens of thousands of people. Some of these are political operative, some of these are grifters, others are genuine people that have moved towards nationalist politics over time. I've been around these spaces long enough to know the usernames, the characters and accounts of those that follow them.
I appreciate none of this is scientific. However, I will take that over a poll any-day of the week and has been more consistent IME than polling (which is well known to be skewed depending on who is doing it).
I've been not paying attention to any of it recently because quite honestly I've burned out on it and instead I am having a break from it.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
But yeah, I do think history will remember this as one of the few good things Trump does.
US will be forced to join and millions of its citizen will die in WW3.
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.
This is why the west has been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades.
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?
(... 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.
You really believe Trump would take meaningful action against Russia? He can even make a forceful statement, let alone act.
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“
https://youtu.be/3Q08a7BI9XI?si=hRszAlQVMOLjJCg7&t=428
How often can you cry wolf?
This is being debated. A European judge who questioned this recently had his email access revoked by Microsoft.
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.
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...
Other oil producers would profit from this, ... including Russia's state-run oil company, which would help them fund their war in Ukraine.
But every group has their extremists.
We need to not forget the extreme Christians...
https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...
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.
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.
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.
I see both arguments, but I’m curious what others think
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.
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.
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-...
This is the IAEA report [0], claiming enough material for 9 weapons.
[0] https://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Analy...
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.
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
The bombing of Iran by Israel and the US is the result of Iran picking a fight with them since 1979.
Innocent children are being maimed, starved, and murdered and it is being done with materiel produced with my tax dollars and provided with the bipartisan endorsement of my government.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not perfect, they have promulgated many evils within their society. The USA is directly responsible for the rise of fundamentalism and sociopolitical precarity within Iran, but even that pales in the light of the disgusting atrocities being committed today by the traitorous US government. Iran has issues, but their biggest issue is the existential threat of the American-Israeli alliance against their sovereignty.
This is absolutely not true. Hamas is actively attempting to destroy Israel. I really hate this watering down of the word "genocide". Terms like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" have specific meanings that shouldn't be diluted through overuse.
"The USA is directly responsible for the rise of fundamentalism and sociopolitical precarity within Iran"
Don't remove agency from the Iranians. THEY chose an Islamic Theocracy all on their own after the Shah was overthrown. You "merica evil" types really like to remove agency from people.
"USA, which is currently engaged in its own domestic ethnic cleansing "
I truly, truly hate Trump and think what ICE is doing is stupid and sadistic but calling it "ethnic cleansing" is completely absurd. The federal government does have the constitutional authority to deport non-citizens.
"Iran has issues, but their biggest issue is the existential threat of the American-Israeli alliance against their sovereignty."
Iran's biggest issue is that they constantly try to pick fights with MUCH stronger countries. They have spend every second since 1979 antagonizing the US and Israel in a profoundly foolish way. Compare this to how Vietnam doesn't hold a grudge against the US and benefits greatly from having a normal relationship with it.
Humans who have retained their ability to process information in an adversarial environment do not struggle to identify such obvious moral failures.
You are completely and utterly delusional. Heavy handed deportation is NOT eradication. You really need to see reality for what it is and not what you need it to be. Go ask everyone you know if they agree with your usage of the word "genocide".
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.
Those of you who received adequate Liberal Arts education will see through him, whether you agree with his intended rhetorical outcome or not.
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?
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.
I think Hezbollah has done some truly disgusting things and I have no delusions about the ill deeds of Iran's regime. But I think it's extremely fair to say that Israel is an even more egregious perpetrator of murder, displacement, and apartheid and Iranians have every right and reason to see themselves in solidarity with Palestinians and the people of Lebanon.
I don't think "acts of war" mean much in real statecraft; there's no referee, things are what people say they are and outcomes are determined by military and economic power. But anyone going down that path has to recognize the hole Iran dug for itself here. They didn't have to do any of this.
But the people of Iran, for very obvious reasons, do not like the real leadership of Iran, and Iran does a lot of things just to keep that leadership structure intact.
Finally, and super-importantly: I think HN is just a weird place to have these kinds of discussions, and I'm very sure nobody who's angry at me about my takes on these things know what I actually believe about any of this stuff --- and why should they? What I believe about any of this is immaterial. Like every nerd, I'm motivated to comment when I see something I "know" to be wrong; that's all that's happening on these threads.
In this particular thread, I only appeared because I think the GBU-57 is a very goofy munition. I had previous to last week thought it was like some ultra-explosive "close as you can get to nuclear without being nuclear" kind of weapon. But nope, it's just a normal bomb strapped to a giant anvil. That's weird! Seems HN-y to comment on.
(But now I'm here and I see things like "the SL of Iran has declared nuclear weapons Haram" and, like, I'm not going to let that fly past! But also: not pretending there's anything useful about this discussion. If it's annoying to you, stop engaging! That's what I'm doing.)
I'll preface this by saying I understand fixating on a small detail, and as evidenced by this thread, I readily engage in that. I also think the thing about the fatwa against nuclear weapons is a little silly, it seems like there are incredibly obvious, rational reasons for Iran to want a nuclear arsenal.
To back up to Oct 2024 (to make a different point, I'm not trying to take us further down the rabbit hole), I think it's worth pointing out how arbitrary it is to choose this moment in time as a point where Iran "dug a hole for itself". Presumably a moment of intervening agency that breaks from what came before and after. It's a vantage point that has no real significance to the broader conflict, doesn't tie to the beginning or end of anything significant. It's unclear why that moment in particular is where Iran could have set us on a different course, and why we should consider jettisoning the rest of historical baggage that lead up to that moment. And it has the whiff of being chosen arbitrarily to exculpate (or sideline any notion of) the United State's involvement in this conflict. It's the kind of detail I expect to see fixated on CNN, without any mention of events like Israel's former invasion of Lebanon, the impact of the Nakba and the One Million Plan on the surrounding Arab states, the Dulles brother's lead coup in Iran that deposed a secular, democratic leader, etc. Not that you even really need to go back that far, there's plenty of events proximate to 10/1/24 that lead to Iran launching missiles, like Israel staging a land invasion outside Lebanon.
I don't think that's what you're doing (I'd rather not speculate on why that moment is significant to you, and would be curious to hear your own take), but I want to explain why discourse like this becomes touchy. For some of us millennials, our defining political experience was seeing the United States become an incredibly sore loser via a problem of our own making (and infuriatingly, we apparently learned nothing from the consequences of funding the Mujahideen). We are obviously, also a victim of our own circumstances, no less than Iran, but we are also an agent of incomparable power in world events. And for many of us it became clear how carelessly, callously, and selfishly that power is wielded and how quickly we victimized ourselves and were unwilling to tolerate criticism. Aaron Sorkin wasn't even able to make the movie that depicted how much of a problem of our own making this was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson%27s_War_(film)#...
All this to say, if you feel ganged up on, I get it and sympathize. I think you have good intentions here, and I'm sorry if I came in too hot. Some of us are just nauseated by our position in the world and culpability for all this harm, and are constantly frustrated by the hegemonic political discourse that is adamant to deflect criticism and prioritize American exceptionalism above all.
Thanks for the detailed response! I could pick at it, but that's not the spirit of where we're at at this point in the thread.
Oh, by the way: Charlie Wilson's War --- the book is much better than the movie.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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.
> It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.”
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.
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.
Anyway
Many people feel regret over various aspects of World War II, including veterans who only killed enemy soldiers in what was honorable combat against a violent and viscous enemy who attacked them. No reason to think military commanders wouldn’t also express regret over using destructive weapons, even if they would have made the same decision over again. There’s no moral difference between bombing a city and killing civilians and bombing a factory making ordinance and also killing citizens. You seem to lack a fundamental understanding of the nature of warfare, and in particular Total War. There are no innocents. Unsurprisingly, the West were the only powers that gave even the slightest damn about minimizing civilian casualties. Which is why we are sitting here talking about western actions because we are a moral people by and large. Nobody in the former USSR has any regrets over raping and murdering Germans.
Same commanders ordered many gruesome, albeit necessary military decisions that resulted in the deaths of soldiers, women, and children.
Interestingly you aren’t quoting those who express regret over any number of those other decisions. Why is that?
Find us some quotes of Japanese commanders that survived the war and their regret over their heinous and disgusting acts. If not maybe you can find some Chinese friends or Filipino colleagues (or others) who can enlighten you.
Truman did not regret using the bombs and would have done it again, and as he said “at the snap of my fingers”, despite being sorrowful for the death and destruction caused. His opinion matters more than anyone else’s since it was his decision. And, your random quoting of people like “nuke them all “ Curtis LeMay shows you don’t even know anything about who you are quoting.
QED.
Nothing you've written is an argument or original lol; it's baseless conjecture. It's certainly as original as flat earth perspectives.
Just out of curiosity what do you think I should respond to in your post above? There's nothing affirmative. There's nothing to counter, I can't even being debate anything because it doesn't say _anything_ other than wild claims that are based on pure narrative.
>I’m sure it’s difficult since your contributions to this discussion are just rehashing quotes that you Google
All of your posts are well, well, well below just rehashing quotes on Google. Try a little bit harder if you want to even being to critique other people?
Please say something substantive and supportable by evidence. Anything at all.
That's for you to figure out. I've proven my point to my satisfaction.
The last thing I'll say is America rules, greatest country on earth. :)
For your reading and understanding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes?wprov=sfti...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?