Someone should really investigate what happened to the 15-year Iran nuclear agreement that set limits on stockpile size and enrichment levels, and allowed international inspector verification.
However, unlike chemical substances, radiation is easily detectable even in minuscule quantities. Just transporting radioactive materials leave a detectable trace, so I bet they won't be lost for long. The only way to actually hide them is to contaminate the whole area with the same materials.
For whatever you feel about WMDs or the justification for the Iraq war, the facts are we spent almost two decades in the first go round, found no WMDs, killed a dictator we installed, blew up a shit ton of infrastructure, rebuild a shit ton of it, killed probably millions of innocent people, absolutely blew up the Taliban and later ISIS's recruitment numbers, made ourselves look fucking stupid on the global stage, then pulled out, leaving billions in military materiel to be claimed by the people we were ostensibly there to stop.
An utter fucking farce, and we have learned absolutely nothing. Time to send more young men to die.
This isn't even to say they are individually imperialists, but every last one, as soon as they take the oath of office, immediately begins getting their hands soaked, drenched in blood. They can't not. That's what the system does and that's all it can do. And the few candidates who ran on the idea that that should be changed were roundly rejected by their associated party, and an independent has received, at most, 5% of the vote?
Nah. Trump was never going to see anything, even for his particularly egregious offenses. I knew it in 2018 and I still know it. If he ever faces the most meager iota of consequences I'll eat my favorite hat, and post video here.
"War crimes" and "crimes against humanity" sound a lot like offenses to so-called international law (cough, treaties).
What does that matter when getting elected was apparently all he needed to dodge the entire thing? There's no evidence at all that said prosecution will resume when (if?) he leaves the White House, he's had free reign to demolish the case against him while in power, and again, all of this hinges on the Justice system actually holding a president accountable for crimes, international or otherwise, which has yet to be done, ever.
Even NIXON didn't actually get prosecuted for anything and (at least before Trump) he was the most crooked president ever, and his crooked actions in office persist to this day in the form of the war on drugs. When you're president, apparently, crime is just legal. It was for Nixon, and it has thus far for Trump.
Well it is relevant to your statement that neither party wants to see a president get convicted. And understanding there is some wiggle room in your exact phrasing, the dems presumably wouldn't have permitted or endorsed the prosecution if they didn't want a conviction.
> getting elected was all he needed
I mean, getting elected president of the United States is probably one of the hardest things to do. I don't like that he has immunity while holding office but the voters used their authority over the justice system to excuse him. It sucks, but it means the DOJ and Atlanta DA office didn't get their day in court. Well, DA Willis kinda shot herself in the foot, but that's beside the point.
> There's no evidence at all that said prosecution will resume
That doesn't change the fact that he was being prosecuted and in all likelihood would have been convicted of numerous felonies. None of the facts will change in four years except that Trump will either be dead or pardon himself.
> Even NIXON didn't actually get prosecuted for anything
He wasn't convicted because he was pardoned. This is a good example to your earlier point of the US not wanting to suffer the disgrace of a president being convicted. But that has limits that we witnessed with Trump. It's unfair to say the justice system won't hold presidents accountable when it doesn't actually get the opportunity due to a pardon from the executive or, in Trump's case, the will of the electorate.
If my suspicion is right, that was one of the more spectacular political miscalculations in American history. If I'm wrong... well, maybe the DOJ was investigating and stuff, but from the outside it looks like they wasted a year that they really could have used.
That said, the Jan 6 prosecutions followed the traditional, deliberate bottom-up approach. The classified documents case was derailed by a maverick Trump judge but would eventually see a jury. The Georgia state charges were hamstrung by their chosen RICO path and Willis's ill-advised romantic entanglement. It could be that Biden and the DNC stayed out of it in a deliberate attempt to take the high road and/or avoid handing Trump a political defense.
On January 7 everyone thought Trump's political career was over and that he could only delay justice. Alas, he set up a very large inflation time bomb in 2020 and the rest is history.
It's true that he wasn't going to be imprisoned, but he wasn't going to "dodge the entire thing". I don't know whether he would have been prosecuted or not; Ford pardoned him before we got a chance to find out.
There is, of course, a lot of pressure for him to resign or for various other things to happen that he is currently managing to put on hold due to the war, but that's legal, and doesn't require wartime.
Absent all that, he faces elections in 2026.
Iran already knows that Israel can decapitate them at will, but not occupy them. Nothing has changed with these strikes.
Bombing nuclear facilities and killing scientists kicks the can down the road and that has worked for decades. But the US/Israel coalition is also trying to negotiate or orchestrate regime change, which could provide a more lasting impact.
Every respected strategist said the exact same fucking thing about Iraq before we killed 17 years there. Didn't stop us from trying and failing.
Well, the hand and the head are different body parts, but one controls the other
citation needed
Are there any credible signs of this?
Considering how far Israel has gone in Gaza, I wouldn't rule out them pursuing maximized goals in Iran.
I can't give you a prediction with timing either, because Israel would have to claim that Iran had rebuilt its facilities for the US to get pulled back in again, and an outsider has no way of telling when they would choose to do that.
I feel about Iran war the same way: yes it's going to happen whether we want it or not, there's nothing we can do. If you persuade everyone to not interfere, Iran would just drop nukes on other countries, so there will be nothing to interfere into later.
Saudi Arabia always declared that if Iran gets nuclear, they will do too, and they have unlimited money to do that.
For many years the IAEA vacillated between praising and and admonishing the Iraqi's for their cooperation or lack thereof.
> It was all way too suspicious
Yea, for _both_ sides. There was clearly more politics being played in these deals than anyone let be known.
> Who knows, maybe there were really no WMDs
There really were no WMDs. They have a shelf life. They expire. There was some evidence they did exist but were likely long gone. Hans Blix was pretty clear on this. This angered the CIA so greatly they made him a target to undermine him. It didn't work.
This is recent history and how quickly it is forgotten.
This is quite untrue. Uranium is only marginally radioactive.
If the inspectors are given sufficient access to do their inspections.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/20/iran-denies-enrichi...
" Iran has denied that it has intentionally enriched uranium to a purity of 84 percent ...
US-based financial news agency Bloomberg reported on Sunday that inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had found uranium enriched to a purity of 84 percent — just below the 90 percent required for a bomb — and are trying to determine if it was produced intentionally."
Peaceful energy requires well under 10%. Enriching any noticeable amount (i.e. >> research/medical quantities) beyond that level has only one purpose - weapons (and you can make a weapon even with slightly sub-90%, and 84% does sound there, it is just a bit more technically complex and yield may be less, yet who measures ...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
Edit: judging by the answers the word "why" happened to be misunderstood in my question. I'll restate it - what purpose Iran has been enriching uranium to 60% for?
So far the only plausible answer has been - weapons.
So, Iran:
- claimed intention of destruction of Israel and US,
- started the actual, not by proxy, war with Israel by missile attack on October 2024,
- and made all the practical steps toward obtaining nuclear weapons (and does have ballistic missiles to carry them)
It is well established by the IAEA itself that Iran fully honored the terms of the JCPOA up until Trump intentionally ruined the agreement by pulling the US out of it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...
That was in 2018; the EU ended up themselves sanctioning Iran for ballistic missiles in 2024,
> "In a statement dated 13 September 2024, the EU strongly condemned the recent transfer of Iranian-made ballistic missiles to Russia, considered as a direct threat to European security [sic!] and as a substantive material escalation from the provision of Iranian UAVs and ammunition, which Russia had used in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. The High Representative stated that the EU would respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners, including with new and significant restrictive measures against Iran."
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024...
> "The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on Iran’s deputy defense minister, senior members of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and three airlines over allegations that they supplied drones, missiles and other equipment to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine."
https://apnews.com/article/eu-russia-drones-missiles-iran-sa...
https://theconversation.com/trumps-first-term-lies-at-the-he...
It's entirely in keeping with nature the man that he now claims to be the worlds peace maker.
but netanyahu wanted oct 7 to happen pretty badly as it's kept him out of jail for a couple of years now
While Trump took the first step down that lead to this path of destruction, but we would not have gotten to where we are now without the enthusiastic help of a cast of cretinous politicians just like him. A pox on all their houses.
The US (specifically Trump at the behest of Netanyahu) broke the agreement, no one else.
Do you have any links or relevant sources to show that they weren't?
https://chatgpt.com/share/6859c708-e53c-8002-bbdb-14150cb4d0...
The upshot is that the US terminated the deal in 2019 and then the Iranians started "racing" for a bomb.
Before you think the nuclear deal was good, I have to ask: Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"?
It seems a bit like holding the world hostage. There are other ways to stop the bomb program, as we have now seen. The diplomatic solution grants Iran permission to destabilize the region by funding Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.
I'm pretty ok bombing hostile religious fanatics trying to develop nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
Lots of nations are "bad actors" in lots of ways. And sanctions come in many different shapes and sizes.
So yes, it is absolutely OK to sanction a country more because they are building a nuclear bomb, and then remove those extra sanctions if they stop.
Sanctions aren't all-or-nothing. The whole idea is that the more you go along with international norms, the less you're sanctioned. Otherwise they wouldn't work to change behavior, because change is always a matter of degrees. Iran isn't going to become Switzerland overnight. That's not how countries work.
As Morpheus said, "Welcome to the real world."
I'm pretty okay bribing nations to verifiably not build nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
Obviously you have to fucking bribe them! Bribing is infinitely better than bombing, where each marginal bombing increases the imperative for every other state to develop their own nukes by reaffirming they are permanently at the mercy of nuclear states!
Umm, what? There are plenty of countries that "have a seat at the table" without nuclear weapons. Depending on what you mean by "seat at the table", of course, but I'm not sure there's any way to define it that excludes 95% of countries.
I'm very happy the US got involved and destroyed their enrichment sites. I'm also happy Israel didn't wait around for Iran to destroy them, which they've actively been trying to do in this war.
Have you seen Israeli leaders plans for 'Greater Israel'?
> I'm very happy the US got involved and destroyed their enrichment sites.
A - Did they though?
B - Cheering on huge breaches of international law, spurring nations to develop their own nuclear weapons and ignore peace talks, seems rather short-sighted.
> I'm also happy Israel didn't wait around for Iran to destroy them, which they've actively been trying to do in this war.
... That's quite the cherry on a remarkably ahistorical cake. Countries generally respond to people genociding and invading their neighbours, assassinating their negotiators and scientists, etc.