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Comment by lwansbrough | Hacker News Reader

Tell me: is the US supposed to stand idly by while the Iranian regime develops nuclear weapons? They pursue nuclear weapons of their own volition, by the way. There are paranuclear states and nuclear threshold states which have not pursued nuclear weapons and have delivered on providing for their people in every manner in which a human society needs. So what does Iran hope to achieve that diplomacy cannot?

At what point does it turn from a "disagreement" to a credible existential threat that an adversary cannot ignore?

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Yes, I am fine standing idly by as Iran gets nukes, just as we did nothing when Israel got nukes, and we didn't really do much besides sanctions after North Korea got nukes. Of all these three examples of nuclear states, Israel is the only one that actually committed espionage against the US to obtain nuclear secrets, and we didn't bomb them.

The USSR also committed espionage to steal nuclear secrets from the US and we didn't bomb them either, so perhaps that is the secret? If you steal US nuclear secrets we "stand idly by" but if you develop the nukes on your own or by stealing someone else's secrets, then we go to war?

I'm really struggling to understand when someone getting nukes is reason to go to war against them, I don't see the other side making any rational arguments that don't boil down to "I don't like country X, and so want to see them weaker, but I do like country Y so I don't mind if they get stronger". But that's a very subjective judgment and should not drive national policy.

The USSR acquiring nuclear weapons was the closest humanity has come to complete annihilation. We were one bad day away from extinction during the Cold War. I'm not sure I would point to that as something we should do more of. Not to mention the potential for accidents and mistakes.

I don't think bombing a country should be the first course of action. Diplomatic action should leave no stone unturned. But if all of that fails, it is strategically advantageous and safer for the world to prevent countries from acquiring nukes by any means necessary.

If you set the example that the cost of pursuing nuclear weapons is unbearable, countries will find better things to do, like enriching themselves in more productive ways.

One of things the US could have done to stop proliferation was to actually honor its commitments it gave to Ukraine in the 1994 agreement in return to Ukraine agreeing to abandon their nukes. It didn't. Now a country sees that US is happy to bomb other non-nuclear countries, but not nuclear countries, and they doen't help even when they agreed to. There is exactly one lesson a country will learn from that.

It's a fair point, but I would flip this around a bit:

Ukraine wants nukes to defend itself from Russia (a nuclear power). Taiwan wants nukes to defend itself from China (a nuclear power). Iran wants nukes to defend itself from the US and Israel (both nuclear powers). India and Pakistan both want nukes to defend themselves from each other (both nuclear powers).

Now I don't want to get into a debate that it is really the benevolent Pakistanis fighting off aggressive Indians or vice-versa or that really Taiwan is the aggressor and that China is a benevolent neighbor, or that poor little Israel is just trying to defend itself from Iran, etc. Those regional squabbles mean nothing to me as I don't even care who is the "real" aggressor, all that matters is that you have two nations in conflict, and when there are two nations in conflict, it is not a stable situation to pretend that just one of them will have nukes but the other will not.

The moment one side gets nukes, the surrounding nations they are in conflict with will also want to get nukes. So as soon as the US got nukes, it's rival, the USSR, also got nukes. And as soon as Israel got nukes, it made it inevitable that at least a few regional rivals in the middle east will get nukes.

Trying to prevent this is guaranteed to fail. It does not matter what the government in Iran happens to be, as long as they care about their own survival, they know they need nukes as long as Israel has them. More importantly, attacking the nation before it gets nukes speeds the process of nuclearization along. Dramatically so. For instance, when Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear power plant, Iraq, which at that time did not have a nuclear weapons program, went full speed ahead trying to develop one. Because it highlighted that they were at risk of being destroyed as nation from a violent neighbor, and so the urgency of developing their own nukes increased. As soon as India got nukes, it became a top priority for Pakistan to get them. If you don't believe that, then you don't understand the world. It does not matter who you think is the bad guy in a conflict, what matters is the asymmetry.

Whatever will be the outcome of this war with Iran, the Iranians now know that getting nukes is priority one. It will happen within a decade, most likely within a few years. The only way to stop this would be boots on the ground and a long term occupation of Iran, which of course no one, not even the US, is capable of doing.

And then Saudi Arabia will want nukes to defend itself from Iran. That's just how this works. KSA will be the next nation to get nuclear weapons after Iran.

Trying to pretend that you can maintain a long running conflict in which only one side has nuclear weapons is incredibly foolish. Obviously this is not going to happen.

> Trying to prevent this is guaranteed to fail.

Most of European countries could have had nukes by now if they weren't stopped by the US/USSR; going by your logic it was inevitable once the UK and France had them the others would follow but they didn't. Of course at the time at least the American leadership was a bit more (forward) thinking than right now.

If you are the only person in the room with a gun, you have a huge advantage. With each additional person getting a gun too the advantage will be less, but it will still make sense to try to stop that process until everyone has a gun, and we are very far from that point. It is actually cheaper to try to stop proliferation than to build your defense with 'everyone has nukes now' in mind.

It's a failure of longterm thinking.

That is a very, uh, idiosyncratic reading of history.

You are conflating the Cuban Missile crisis of October 1962 -- which was the USSR placing nuclear weapons close to the US in Cuba in early 1962, in response to the US placing nuclear weapons close to the USSR in Turkey in 1961, and in your mind you have blended that crisis, which was a close call in which both sides ultimately agreed to withdraw their nukes, with the acquisition of nukes by the USSR 11 years earlier.

Yet when North Korea, India, China, Pakistan, South Africa, or Israel, got nukes this did not set off a crisis, it was the brinksmanship that set off a crisis.

Soon, both major powers in the gulf -- Iran and KSA will get nukes. Odds are this will happen within a decade. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

There are too many pressures forcing this to happen, not least of which is the clear understanding that these nations need to have nukes to prevent destruction by the other nuclear powers some of which are clearly hostile to them and bent on their destruction. It's why North Korea, which kept their nukes, is still around, but Libya, which gave up their nukes, has been dismembered. Just as a matter of self-defense and survival this is inevitable.

However what we can do is tone down the rhetoric of nuclear brinksmanship, threatening global war if a rival doesn't withdraw their nukes. That was the real lesson of the Cuban Missile crisis, which you have confused with Russia's 1949 achievement, or China's 1964 achievement.

Since no one is going to disarm their nukes, this is just something people have to live with. Threatening war over this issue is exactly what causes the risk of global catastrophe, not the spread of the technology, which is inevitable.

I never mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis. You’ve misinterpreted what I said.

The USSR getting nukes in the first place lead to several incidents which were a judgment call away from armageddon. With the benefit of hindsight the correct call would have been to exhaust all options to prevent the soviets from acquiring nukes.

We just got lucky. Whether it was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the soviet early warning system malfunction in Sept 83, or Able Archer 83 in November, there was a lot of dumb luck.

Proliferation will bring the end of humanity. There will be too many actors, too many variables. You can get lucky with 2 actors. You can’t keep getting lucky. The only option is to ensure you don’t have to be lucky.

I assumed you meant the Cuban missile crisis since that is the only tenuous connection that can be made between "USSR acquiring nuclear weapons" and "end of humanity". If you generally meant "any nation acquiring nuclear weapons" then the statement would kind of make sense, but there is no reason to fear just the USSR, and not, say, the US, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, or North Korea. Maybe some information made it into the popular press about the USSR, but it is unlikely that there is something especially dangerous about the USSR compared to all these other nations.

And in any case, the genie is out of the bottle. There is not gonna be a situation in which a small group of nuclear powers endlessly bomb and attack other countries with impunity. The other nations will get nukes to defend themselves against the existing nuclear powers, it's just a matter of time.

Iran had a deal and wasn't working on bombs, according go all US intelligence agencies. It just failed because trump ripped up the deal.

Last year they were getting close to a deal. It also just failed as Israel killed Irans negotiators.

This situation is engineered.

I'm not sure what Iran having nukes does other than change the power dynamics in the Middle East to one where Israel can't bomb civilians with such impunity...

North Korea and Pakistan has nukes.

I think most people in the middle east will tell you that Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is bad. As I'm sure you're aware, they are a major supporter of terrorist organizations.

I'm aware that the present is informed by the past. 1953, like 1979, being a year in the past.

Discussing what terrorism is, in this context, is rather complicated. Especially speaking as a Brit, and knowing rather a lot of other dates, such as 1917.

It shouldn't be that complicated to acknowledge that Iran's proxies are about as cut and dry terrorists as they come.

It's surprising how many things that you would think are "cut and dried" are apparently in fact not "cut and dried", although granted it's much easier to identify instances that stray to one side of a boundary rather than another.

For example, the idea that bombing civilians is a war.

There was a deal, Trump cancelled. There were negotiations where the Iranian regime actually made big concessions. But, Trump administration was not interested in concessions and started a war with no real reason.

> At what point does it turn from a "disagreement" to a credible existential threat that an adversary cannot ignore?

It was not nearly this point. This was a point where USA, Israel and Saudi perceived Iran as weak and easier target. That is why the war started.

Iran has zero leverage. Any leverage given is an olive branch. Obama era diplomacy was the right path, Trump is a moron. But the bigger issue here is Iran's free-will pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is a choice they're making. They choose to pursue nuclear weapons, forcing the US to either take a diplomatic path to stop them, or intervene.

They don't have to build nuclear weapons! They're just doing that shit.

Well now they have to, given that a single nuke ownership (and its never a single one, is it) would prevent any such actions. I don't think anybody sane at this point thinks any sort of regime change is going to happen in this century.

The bigger problem is - current war won't prevent them from obtaining it. It may delay the date, but also will make them work smarter, hide things better and give them much more resolve. I can see ie putin helping them get through some technological or material hurdles, that would help him greatly in their war in ukraine.

We can agree that starting a war with Iran is sort of the magnum opus of the worst administration in American history.

But I do feel obligated to interrogate the idea that the US is responsible for this escalation. Iran is seeking to expand its power and influence in the region, and employs violent means upon people - even its own people - to achieve these goals. The regime is, fundamentally, amoral.

The US gets to decide if it wants to put a stop to that. But left alone, the world gets more dangerous the stronger the Iranian regime becomes. The same cannot be said about the United States. The period of history belonging to the unipolar US liberal order was probably the most prosperous and peaceful time in history.

Unipolar being the key here. The world will get more dangerous with a stronger US in the current multipolar world.

That depends who you ask - Vietnamese, Iraqi, Afghani, heck whole middle east, almost whole north Africa? Chile? Nicaragua? Cuba? Russia? China? And so on? Not so much.

Generally US tries to represent freedom and democracy and be the force of good, but they often ending up representing it in pretty horrible and messed up ways which end very far from these ideals. Road to hell is often paved with good intentions, isn't it. So no, too strong US ain't very good for rest of the world, quadruple that with current leadership. I am not saying China or russia are better, or even equal, far from it, its rather loss in each direction.

Iran is a bit special in its absolute hate for Israel and a bit whole west, but thats purely wet dream of ayatollahs that came to power after 1978, till then they were regional friends and one of best western partners. That revolution weas triggered purely by utter incompetence of CIA and british MI6, so thanx guys for fucking up entire region for everybody.

I don't think there is a single country in this world who would welcome them becoming nuclear power - not russians, not chinese, and definitely nobody around them. But maybe its too much to expect from reality - it would require such a massive ground invasion that US is not willing to wage (and pay for) and it would take a nuke to NY or similar level to trigger it.

It was trump who killed off the original agreement. The IAEA was content with the way the inspections went, Trump just once again talked out of his ass.

As far as I know, most countries don't require such an agreement because they don't develop nuclear weapons. Are we forgetting that Iran has autonomy?

Most counties have signed non proliferation agreements.

Iran themselves are an NPT signatory! And yet they pursue nuclear weapons while countries like Japan, Germany, Canada and Netherlands do not.

They probably should get started on that as it seems to be the only detterent for genocidal regimes like Russia, US and Israel from attacking you.

No. The greater deterrent is to make the world so complexly integrated that such actions carry an enormous cost.

That whole approach has a bad historical track record-- people tought WW1 "impossible" for the exact same reason.

Not only that, but the only way to do this is to stack the risk against yourself in the case it ever fails.

Just look at the EU/Russia energy dependency. There is good reason that no serious nation does this (intentionally) with actually vital goods like their food supply (not even among allies, really).

Join the American hegemony or get bombed?

USA and Israel have brought this upon themselves. After decades of regime change operations in the region (usually for the worse), it is clear that any state that doesn't pursue nuclear weapons isn't really an independent state.

Do you know who doesn't get regime-changed? North Korea.

North Korea has the backing of the US' two most powerful adversaries, it was not a free pass.

The US can deploy a carrier strike group faster than any nation can build a nuclear weapon. And after seeing the hellfire unleashed on Iran, it is clear that pursuing nuclear weapons may not be the answer it once appeared to be.

Meanwhile, the so-called vassal states of the US - some of the richest countries on Earth mind you - haven't bothered to deploy nuclear weapons because we have no use for them.

Man, it seems much more like "must have" thing than it did just 2 years ago. And at that point it seemed more "must have" thing than it did 5 years ago. Trump does not mind nuclear proliferation anyway. If you pay Kushner enough, chances are they will even sell you a nuke.

> Meanwhile, the so-called vassal states of the US

I haven't seen that expression at all, ever. No one was called those state vasal states a year ago. And now, as fascists are in American government, it is becoming routine amount right wing. The logic seems to be that any former ally that does not start war with USA is a vassal or something.

> haven't bothered to deploy nuclear weapons because we have no use for them.

French recently announced change of doctrine, they will expand nuclear arsenal.

Well I won't deny that. Nevertheless, countries who "play ball" seem to have it pretty good. Awfully high cost to pay to stick it to the man in charge.

Do what I say and I won't punch you, maybe.

There is no alternative. Just be thankful it's not the Soviet Union.

There's always an alternative.

Take it to the final form. It's game theory. The US is promoting system that enables a Nash equilibrium. By playing by the US' rules you empower yourself and you empower those around you. And the US takes a service fee for operating the market.

The alternative is trying to fight that, and if you're picking a fight with the strongest player, you're playing to lose.

> Take it to the final form. It's game theory. The US is promoting system that enables a Nash equilibrium. By playing by the US' rules you empower yourself and you empower those around you. And the US takes a service fee for operating the market.

This is what an empire, that is competently run, should do. The US is not an empire, and it is not competently run. It has no attributes in common with empires of history. It does not occupy foreign lands, it does not extract taxes, it does not (directly) control foreign governments. If anything, in this case, the US is under the control of a foreign government.

I suspect it's under the transactional control of whomever provides the details for a sufficiently large bitcoin wallet to Steve Witkov

I agree that's what the US used to do.

Now it's threatening to invade NATO allies, and other allies are deploying troops to deter that; Which makes perfect sense because you cannot appease authoritarians.

The US is in fairly rapid, self inflicted, decline at this point.

I have faith that the Americans will right the ship. "Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else."

They're just getting started on "everything else".

My sense is this is an inflection point, and it may take decades to play out. At that point, the world will have irreversibly changed.

Well.

After you've misled the world into supporting the USA in Iraq:

"WHERE IS THE PROOF?"

This time, you didn't even try to submit proof. The "feeling" of your delusional president should be enough.

Or not even that, since the reasoning changes daily.

Try harder.

I'm not American. There is a host of publicly available proof of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is not, and has never been, a well kept secret of the regime.

Pentagon made few reports that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons - I bet they have better intelligence that you. Their killed religious leader made fatwa that forbid having or using weapons of mass destruction. Surprisingly now when he is gone they can pursue it after being attacked. Also worth to watch many Bibi talks since 1980s where he sais Iran will have nukes very soon and this didn't materialize in 40 years.

You realize how much work has gone into ensuring that didn't materialize in those 40 years, right? JCPOA... Stuxnet?

The Pentagon agrees that Iran is not officially pursuing nuclear weapons. However, there are CIA reports that indicated there may have been covert operations taking place that were exploring cruder nuclear weapons. I imagine that was the basis for the US bombing of Iran in 2025.

> You realize how much work has gone into ensuring that didn't materialize in those 40 years, right? JCPOA... Stuxnet?

JCPOA agreement was nuked by Trump administration. No, I don't buy your arguments, If Iran would wanted to have Nukes would have it already made those in 5 years for sure. Kim didn't have problems for making those.

Also, by his logic they succeeded in thwarting Iran's efforts for 40 years without resorting to bombing civilians. So we still need to see proof for why this is now, all of a sudden, the only way forward.

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