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Comment by ifyoubuildit | Hacker News Reader

What exactly are the problem and the solution?

Permanently disarming Iran, and creating conditions favorable to the fall of the Islamist terrorist regime that has been bullying the Mideast since 1979.

Any guesses on how long that will take, what it will cost, and the odds if it happening at all?

No idea, but it's safe to say that Iran has lost most of their navy and air force already. It's harder to tell how many launchers, missiles, and drones Iran has left however, as it is deliberately hiding and conserving munitions for what they expect will be a protracted conflict.

The other unknown is how far the U.S., Isreal, and potentially other countries are willing to go. Turning the lights off and literally sending Iran back to the stone age wouldn't be so difficult at this stage, but would probably rule out the possibility of a deal that sees Iran disarm and hand over the enriched uranium.

You're basically advocating for war crimes which the US has already started to do.

Iran had already offered to give up the enriched uranium bit that is off the table now. Iran should and will pursue a nuclear weapon in order to protect themselves from American and Israeli imperialism.

I don't see the difference between the US and Iran given what you are suggesting. How would you treat an Iranian attack on the Golden Gate Bridge? Would you call that a cowardly terror attack?

Yeah, does sending them back to the stone age buy us anything good? 90 million starving migrants with an understandable axe to grind with the US? Or are we just going to kill them all and become the monsters we claim to hate?

You realize that Iran will retaliate by attacking their neighbors' power and desalinization plants? Do you want most of the ME to go dark and lacking water?

Even Netenyahu has said you can't do regime change without some sort of boots on the ground. Iran is much bigger and more mountainous than Iraq. The IRGC has a couple hundred thousand active personell.

Who's going to deal with the Zionist terrorist regime that has been bullying the Middle East since 1948?

Or the Wahabi regime that sponsored the sort of fanaticism that led to the rise of Al Qaeda?

Let's not put a moral spin on America's realpolitik.

Maybe read up on the history before 1979. Maybe toppling a democratic regime in 1952 in order to get their oil was not the best move.

If you're worried about a state that terrorises the region, best to focus on Israel

North Korea was able to get nuclear weapons because we didn't want the carnage of artillery bombardment to Seoul that would have been the retaliation, had we stopped them.

Iran was close to achieving that same thing with ballistic missile bombardment of Europe.

The problem is that Iran, unlike NK, is run by a fanatical death cult with stated goal of attacking United States and history of running proxy militias in every nearby failed state, in a neighborhood that has no shortage of failed states.

> fanatical death cult

Why do you believe this? Their recent actions don't seem to back it up.

Their idea of "martyrdom" is killing people who disagree with them. Not, "it can be ok to kill people who disagree with you once it reaches the point of war," but, "these people's forebears didn't listen to our god, so we must always hunt them, and also the jews."

IF(highest sacrifice in your cult is dying while trying to kill those who disagree with you because of same) THEN (you are in a death cult)

> Their idea of "martyrdom" is killing people who disagree with them. Not, "it can be ok to kill people who disagree with you once it reaches the point of war," but, "these people's forebears didn't listen to our god, so we must always hunt them, and also the jews."

You know the one about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?

>You know the one about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?

I will give you the benefit of the doubt on asking for these claims, but you should consider what burden of proof you are asking for: constant political slogans advocating attacks? Or do you need the leader to explicitly state that that's not just a slogan? Forthright statements in their religious texts advocating the same?

And would you expect that level of specificity and forthrightness of other comparable claims?

No need for any benefits of the doubt, let me make myself perfectly clear. I think that you're throwing wild claims, relying on the general ignorance and media conditioning of the average American (largely the audience on this forum) in order to provide "familiar vibes" as the foundations of your claims in the minds of that audience.

Now, specifically, you said that: "Their idea of "martyrdom" is killing people who disagree with them". Are "they" Iranians? Shia? Muslims in general? People of the middle east in general? After having settled the question of who "they" are, you are then claiming that if they kill those who merely disagree with them, they consider those doing the killing to be martyrs? That would disagree with the common understanding of what a martyr is worldwide, and hence my comment about your claim being quite extraordinary.

I challenge you to not try to steer the topic away from my questions, or make additional claims without being specific and providing evidence for those either. I am not interested in widening the scope of the conversation into endless arguing.

Ok, I'll be clear too. I think your questions are meant not to seek answers, but as aspersions, and I am skeptical that any evidence, overwhelming though it might be in other cases, would satisfy you in this instance. Iran is exceptional in providing so much evidence of the leadership's ill intentions, and by your generalizations I doubt you are aware of them.

More playing to vibes. For the passive reader, given that no evidence whatsoever was provided (let alone of the extraordinary kind) despite having been given ample opportunity to do so, please consider the extraordinary claims to be effectively retracted.

Have a good night.

You're more than 5 layers down in a day-old thread; there's no one else here. Just me talking to you and you, as I now understand, talking to no one.

> it can be ok to kill people who disagree with you once it reaches the point of war

How does this work out when we are the ones that decided to start the war? Does saying the word "war" suddenly absolve us of the crimes we commit in that war?

The US defense secretary (excuse me, War secretary) is almost covered with tattoos and mottoes celebrating the Crusades [1]. I wouldn't go around accusing other countries of being run by "death cults" if I were you. We have a nuclear-armed death cult called Christian Dominionism here at home.

1: https://i.imgur.com/cDjIG2S.png

I agree that the quantity of tattoos on the SecWar is appalling.

What makes you think the Iranian regime wants a destroyed country as opposed to setting up strong opposition to the West in the region? "Fanatical Death Cult" just sounds like propaganda for justifying war with them as opposed to diplomatic solutions. North Korea and Russia saber-rattle plenty. It's a tactic.

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