Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

Author seems to not care about the prospect of the Iranian regime developing nuclear weapons, putting those weapons into the hands of its terrorist proxies, and sitting back while those proxies turn Western Europe and Palestine into radioactive wastelands (yes, Palestine, because it is not possible to restrict the fallout to just Tel Aviv, and the regime has shown itself to be far more anti-Israel than pro-Palestinian, the prospect of Palestine being a radioactive wasteland for a century is an acceptable price for destroying Israel). The US and the rest of the West should, apparently, just accept this as inevitable historical destiny, because $5/gallon gasoline or putting boots on the ground are apparently so utterly reprehensible.

Author's analysis, as critical as he is of American presidents breaking their promises, is completely absent of analysis of what would happen if American presidents broke their promises to never allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Never mind that JCPOA had a sunset clause that would allow Iran to resume nuclear enrichment to weapons-grade after the sunset clause.

The author's analysis pretty blatantly exposes reality: the West is losing because it does not have the political stomach to win. Instead of deciding that maybe society should try to develop that political stomach, instead of paying attention to a Trump who got elected in large part on mantras about how America was losing and it needed to start winning, no, Author says this was all a horrible idea and implicitly we should just sit back while our enemies progress along the road of putting nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.

You seem to suffer from selective memory, your president declared Irans nuclear program "totally, totally destroyed" and your post "fake news". That was half a year ago. What necessitated another obviously useless strategic air campaign?

Its ironic it's not even discussed anymore in the US. A year in and you can't find a political post on HN, it's all blackholed - we've gone past "I didn't vote for him" straight to posts like this from alternative reality where he doesn't exist, doesn't say or do things.

What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to terrorists or use those weapons at all?

This does not happen even in the most insane examples like North Korea.

The more likely outcome would be that they would be able to avoid getting their schools/hospitals etc. bombed.

In your mind US should just nuke iran so there is regime change? Can you calculate how this would play out after that happens?

> What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to terrorists or use those weapons at all?

a. They have armed and financed their terrorist proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and others), who used those arms and capital to commit acts of terrorism against their regime enemies (the US and Israel).

b. Witkoff literally offered them free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes and they turned him down, bragging that they had enough highly enriched nuclear fuel already for nuclear weapons

c. I can put 2 and 2 together

In what universe does having nuclear weapons protect you from getting schools and hospitals bombed? Israel very likely has nuclear weapons, but Israeli schools and hospitals are getting bombed by Iranian missiles. So what?

Israel can't just be bombing Iran and then nuking them when Iran retalliates by bombing them back. Because this will be too much bad PR even for Israel as the vast majority of people will find evaporating people indiscriminately is unacceptable.

With all this considered I think it is clear why Iran is able to bomb Israel back and Israel can't just nuke them.

I think the points you made about why Iran would give nuclear weapons to terrorists make no sense. Because Iran would, presumably, get obliterated when those terrorists use those weapons on any country.

As far as I know, full-on invasion of a country that has nuclear weapons has never occured in history so far. So Iran having nuclear weapons in a defensive capacity is obviously good for them. In fact all countries having nuclear weapons in middle east might have made it more peaceful but would have been obviously terrible for Israel/USA

>Witkoff literally offered them free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes and they turned him down, bragging that they had enough highly enriched nuclear fuel already for nuclear weapons

Can we believe anything that the senior people in the current US administration say, at this point in time?

> What makes you think they will give nuclear weapons to terrorists or use those weapons at all?

The Islamic Regime is effectively a terrorist organization itself, so Iran getting nuclear weapons would be effectively giving a terrorist Jihadist organization a nuclear weapon. The Islamic Regime simply cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon and the military costs to stop them will continue to get higher as time goes, this is a problem that we will inevitably have to deal with and dealing with it sooner rather than later is likely always going to be the best option as the costs to deal with the Regime will only continue to increase.

> This does not happen even in the most insane examples like North Korea.

North Korean leaders value self preservation much more than the Islamic Regime leaders do, they also do not use terrorism in same way or to the same degree as Iran does. North Korean leaders also don't generally have ideologies similar to Martyrdom/Jihad like Islamic Regime leaders have(these ideologies specifically make traditional mutually assured destruction deterrence strategies largely ineffective).

Donald Trump obviously doesn't care either, because every action he has taken during his two terms has increased the risk of Iran developing nuclear weapons.

JCPOA was highly flawed, but it was a lot better than nothing, which is what Trump traded it for.

If Trump was serious about stopping Iran's nuclear program, he would have made taking Isfahan a top priority of the initial strikes.

That doesn't change in the least the argument the OP made. The UN's IAEA has declared that Iran deceived them, didn't follow the agreements, and even accused them of violating the agreements with the intent to build a bomb.

As to Trump's motivations, they don't change this calculus. Iran intended to nuke their neighbors, and Israel, not just before Trump came to power but literally before the first Bush became president. And the full situation is even worse: right after the mullah's came to power in a leftist revolution in 1979, they begged for US and Israel's help to stop Saddam Hussein from nuking them. They got that help ... and then figured that nukes are a great idea.

Here's what the mullahs are most afraid of btw. The biggest threat to their power, the biggest problem for their central-London villas:

https://x.com/NarimanGharib/status/2036761330359615897

This local opposition to them has systematically worsened over time, btw. So I wouldn't put it past the mullahs to nuke Iran itself, eventually. It also means that Iran's islamic regime is threatening everyone, for the simple reason that if they make a single concession loosening their grip on Iran, they'll be lynched, one by one, in the streets, by people they went to school with. That is how much Iran's regime is "winning".

You, me, solatic and acoup probably all agree that a nuclear weapon in Iranian hands is a huge danger.

But it's only Donald Trump that has used that as an excuse to make that danger greater.

And acoup has a great counter-point to your tweet in the article.

The Soviet Union dealt with massive internal protest quite successfully for pretty much every single one of its 70 years of existence. The Soviet Union only fell when insiders took it down.

Iran appears to be in absolutely no danger of that happening.

JCPOA was followed with minor discrepancies like having less than 1 ton too much heavy water. US intelligence agencies agreed that Iran was not working on a bomb as US left JCPOA, as they testified to in congress.

Well, here is the final UN report, from the horses mouth so to speak:

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-25.pd...

(they preliminarily reported the same stance even in 2024, before any attacks)

TLDR: Iran, despite having signed a treaty allowing access, is hiding highly enriched uranium, enough to build 9, maybe 10 nuclear devices. It is also not complying with its other obligations under the NPT treaty.

And then Iran responded to this ... by boasting of making nuclear weapons grade uranium to make bombs, to American diplomats:

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/iran-eastern-stat...

Now I get that American diplomacy is a shitshow since ... a certain event. However, I fail to come up with a worse attitude that Iran could have had at the time. They are openly boasting of having "the divine right" to enriched uranium that can only be used for bombs in negotiations ...

I also get that Americans (and everyone else, for that matter) feel that it's entirely unfair that they have to care about nuclear weapons in Iran. But if nobody does ... Iran's leaders have made it clear that as soon as they have the weapons, nuclear war starts. What I find baffling is that nobody cares ...

Of course, now it turns out that UAE and Saudi Arabia have since been SCREAMING at the US to do something. But the people it will affect the most are of course in Europe and Asia (everyone except Russia, Norway and Ukraine), who are effectively going to see yet another 3-4% tariff, except this one applies even on goods they produce themselves, for themselves. The EU is burning massive amounts of political goodwill trying to get a few percent savings, and now they'll have to do tell their people they're saving at least double that, in a few months time, with no real warning.

They started again in 2021, years after Trump left the JCPOA and imposed heavy sanctions. You see how one thing might lead to another? Its almost like someone wants this to happen.

I don't really care what you say, this is the IRGC, who massacred 50 people at Brussels airport for example. If they feel they are unfairly treated in any way, they can always report to the Belgian authorities, who I'm sure will provide a small windowless room with free meals.

And until they do that, and until they're let out again, no amount of arguments will ever make me agree that it's just not fair. In fact, if everyone even remotely involved with them gets shot THAT I will call fairness.

Yeah they should. Netanyahu and Israels leaders should report to the ICJ.

You don't really care because you don't have a valid argument. Fact is Iran was complying with JCPOA, as all US intelligence agencies agreed on. It was working. But it had one flaw, Obama signed it and the orange baby couldn't deal with that, and likely Israel/Netanyahu influencing Trump back then as well as they were opposing the deal from the start.

Now I don't think Iran should have nuclear weapons, but lets be fair here, they followed the deal, but still got sanctions put on them as if they were building a bomb, why not do it then? If we're to judge them by what politicians, generals or religious zealots has said in the past, then look no further than the US and what they thought about using nukes post ww2, I would argue they were much much worse no matter what Iran has said.

Like I said you cannot make a reasonable argument that Iran respected international treaties and is now being treated unfairly. That's utterly and completely ridiculous, regardless of the specific treaty.

Iran's government organizes massacres, inside and outside of Iran. Could you illuminate further to me which treaties that little practice follows and how unfair it is it causes bad things to happen to them?

>>Like I said you cannot make a reasonable argument that Iran respected international treaties

> Iran was complying with JCPOA, as all US intelligence agencies agreed on.

??? I'm not even the one making the argument.

People repeat themselves saying "JCPOA was highly flawed, but it was better than nothing", as if JCPOA would have prevented Iran from getting nuclear weapons. It would not - it only delayed Iran getting nuclear weapons, and so by that line of thinking, it only delayed the onset of war.

Delaying the onset of war is not worthless, but it is not the same as arguing that war could have been avoided, which is what people who roll out that claim are really trying to argue. It's only true in a universe where Iran would have collapsed from within before the expiration of the sunset clause, and that clearly was not going to happen.

> as if JCPOA would have prevented Iran from getting nuclear weapons

"highly flawed" implies that it's not very good at its primary goal

> it only delayed Iran getting nuclear weapons

That sounds better than no delay

> That sounds better than no delay

That depends on what Iran does in the meantime, does it not? If Iran effectively turned their missile program into a true deterrent then negotiated delay is worse, because it would remove the ability to stunt the development through military means. Which is very much the argument being made for the “why now” of this war.

> It's only true in a universe where Iran would have collapsed from within before the expiration of the sunset clause, and that clearly was not going to happen.

No one can know this hypothetical, but some def bet their entire futures/careers on this: that an Iran with a more prosperous middle class (as a result of JCPOA) might have had a better chance for social/internal reform, i.e. regime change.

In all my years, I've never seen Iran care one bit about influencing or bothering any country outside of its sphere of influence. But I've seen Iran be antagonized nonstop and respond accordingly.

As an American who lives abroad and travels around the world, I've never had the slightest worry about "oh man what if Iran does something?" But I've had to adjust flight and travel plans several times, I've had cost of living surge, I've witness chaos causing terrorist splinter groups that attack countries around the world because Israel and America have started some stupid conflict and said "we had no choice bro we had to attack them because in 80 years they would've made a bomb that might've killed a civilian bro you have to trust me bro." And frankly, I'm done even taking those arguments in good faith. I simply refuse. The mess these two countries cause has caused far more death than even if Iran had a nuke, ten nukes, or one thousand nukes.

> I've never seen Iran care one bit about influencing or bothering any country outside of its sphere of influence

Its sphere of influence includes Israel, Gaza (Hamas), Yemen (Houthis), Iraq (various Shia splinter groups), and Lebanon (where Hezbollah refuses to accept the sovereignty of the Lebanese government). You are being willfully ignorant.

Nope, not ignorant. I know that. And I don't care one bit if Iran dominates that area. I'm at a point where I'd prefer it because it's absolutely better than the mess the first country on that list causes, with hacking, election interference, terrorism, war, and ethnic cleansing to name a few. I think a growing number of people globally are sick of it.

And funny you mention Lebanon. Iran isn't the country bombing Lebanon every few years or seizing land there either. But right now another country is invading and seizing land and not accepting the sovereignty of the Lebanese government. [1] Always funny how accusations in 2026 really just are a way of confessing.

[1] https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-89105...

Hezbollah has assassinated multiple government leaders and politicians and administrators within Lebanon, including a bombing that killed 23 people including the Prime Minister, and shootings that killed investigators responsible for investigating the Beirut port explosion a few years ago. Suspiciously this was shortly after Hezbollah was found by those investigations to have many links to the circumstances in which so much ammonium nitrate was being stored improperly in the first place.

Hezbollah also assisted the Assad regime in Syria during the Syrian Civil war - participating in laying siege to entire villages for long enough that people starved to death.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2017/11/syri...

You are willfully ignorant. There is tremendous anger at Hezbollah even within Lebanon, especially since they restarted the war on Iran's behalf in recent weeks, giving Israel the causus belli to resume their bombing campaign against them.

Man that's crazy. Just to compare, how many have died from Israeli attacks on Lebanon?

Looking at Wikipedia, apparently 1000+ have been killed in Lebanon so far during this war. So it seems Israel has done 50x more harm. Interesting.

> I've never seen Iran care one bit about influencing or bothering any country outside of its sphere of influence.

There’s this weird attitude I see where people claim “realpolitik” to give other nations colonial rights to their neighbors while denying the same to America. If you buy into “spheres of influence” as a concept it’s time to accept that the US, as the world’s preeminent military and economic power, has a sphere of influence that spans the globe.

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