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Comment by koevet | Hacker News Reader

But wasn't Iran already docile to America? Sure, it wasn't a crystal clear ally like Saudi or the Gulf states, but behind the anti-Zionist propaganda and "evil US" blabbering, there were decades of backchannel negotiations, regional pragmatism, and even moments of cooperation — especially when mutual interests aligned, like in post-Taliban Afghanistan or the fight against ISIS.

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Iran sponsored insurgents in Iraq and provided the training and means to build explosively formed penetrators that killed 196 US troops:

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.

> explosively formed penetrators that killed 196 US troops...

Well, it's a good thing Trump completely neutralized retaliatory action against US troops. /s

I’m not arguing for or against the merits of the recent strikes. I am disputing the notion that Iran’s anti-US stance is purely rhetoric for domestic consumption.

One of the arguments against limited strikes against the Iranians was that it would be simply stirring up the hornets nest and things spiraling out of control.

I agree. I was pointing out that these anti-US-troop actions by Iran were related to prior conflicts / actions by the US. There was unlikely any consideration to downstream reactions which will endanger our troops. Completely short-sighted warmongering.

You mean troops from occupying forces that engaged in an illegal war to overthrow the government, based on lies about WMDs, who killed over 120,000 civilians?

As far as I'm aware, you don't get to project military force 8000 miles away and then complain about killed soldiers. Which has been the US' favourite past time since the 60s.

So, should we have invaded in 2003? Why were the people now calling to just kill the entire country not talking about this just two weeks ago, let alone years or decades ago?

America and the broader west (and even much of the not-west) has been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades. A nuclear armed Iran means much the middle east, which considers Iran a dire enemy, would feel compelled to immediately launch their own nuclear weapons programs.

They could if they wanted to acquire nuclear weapons though. The Saudis explicitly funded the Pakistani nuclear programme with the option of access to nukes if required.

No way is KSA helping Iran.

But Pakistan can always supply Iran. They literally gave North Korea their nuke tech.

No. Iran vehemently wanted nukes and the West (and its strong/rich local vassal states) vehemently didn't want Iran to have the nukes and Iran knew that and the West knew that Iran knew that. So no. (In fact SA has quite some money into Pakistani nukes; not sure what's the "access" agreements :P)

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