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Comment by annexrichmond | Hacker News Reader

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Nukes are not really for actual use but for deterrence so likely no lives would have been lost. Israel has nukes and they don't use them unless somebody attacks them with nukes. Same with other countries. Ideally both Israel and Iran as well as North Korea, maybe also Pakistan and India should not have nukes. And even more ideal it would be if nobody had them but the cat's out of the bag already.

Iran has repeatedly stated their intent to use them.

They've also stated at various times that they believe first use or any use to be against Islamic law.

I don't find any of these statements to be particularly credible, but I also don't think they're going to strap the first bomb they make to the closest missile they find and immediately send it at Tel Aviv when it surely means the total destruction of the Iranian state.

Iran has repeatedly stated they will not develop nuclear weapons.

do you remember what usa president stated just couple of days ago? to destroy whole country. didnt it sounded credible enough?

India, The biggest democratic country should not have nukes but its ok for a bunch of colonizers and authoritarian state like china to have.

> we should have let Iran have nukes?

What part of this war has made Iran less likely to get a nuclear weapon?

There could have been a good war in Iran. A coalition of nations going in to secure the uranium. It would have been messy. But it would have had a clean objective.

As objective yes but whose lives would be spared for this objective? Messy is relative to policies. Aren't other ways to attain this objective other than through war? I really think there were attempts and progress in that direction.

> So we should have let Iran have nukes? How many lives would have been lost then?

Fewer, because we would've been deterred from attacking them. Unless we decided to risk nuclear war, I guess.

US doesn't have to engage for Iran to use nukes. But of course we should prevent that from becoming a realistic scenario?

> US doesn't have to engage for Iran to use nukes

Sure, in a purely physical sense, I suppose they could launch a nuke, triggering MAD and Israel's Samson Doctrine and ending human civilization for no reason. Currently I think Israel, the US, North Korea, and Russia have a higher (though still low) risk of doing that. In that order, by the way, though I could probably be convinced to bump Russia up higher.

If Israel can have them, yes. Ideally, neither Israel nor Iran would have them.

I thought Iran's nuclear capability was destroyed in the June 2025 bombings?

They were able to move and hide a lot of the enriched uranium ahead of those bombings. Not all of it was destroyed.

I think that would be more believable, or at least the US/Israel would be more supportable in this, if they hadn't testily insisted on terms like "obliterated" and "set back by years" several months ago. You can only cry "nuke" so many times in a year. https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...

does iran even want nukes?

they have a religious law against making or using them, and theyve been sitting at "they could make a nuke within a week" for the past 20 years or more

it feels like people are falling for iran's bargaining chip - they want people to think they could make one, but not actually make one

There was zero evidence they were close to a nuke. In fact, they've been alleged to be weeks away from a nuke for over 20 years. And the accusations come from the ones with the illegal nukes themselves!

Why do we "let" Israel have nukes?

Iran shouldn't have nukes, but starting a war—burning billions of dollars a day, killing kids and innocent civilians, and leveling bridges and universities—is objectively the worst possible way to prevent it.

The JCPOA under Obama actually did a solid job of constraining their nuclear development. That was the pragmatic approach, but Trump just unilaterally scrapped the deal. He doesn't have an actual strategy, maybe just "concepts of a plan".

This regime has been around for half a century. We supposedly destroyed their nuclear program last summer. And somehow their nuclear potential just became a war-worthy threat in February? Come on. Don’t tell me you actually believe that shit.

Unless we actually invade, all this war will do is demonstrate to Iran that obtaining nuclear weapons is an existential necessity for them, and kick the program into high gear. Oh, and provide them with plenty of funding for it due to their newfound ability to collect tolls for a vital shipping chokepoint.

> We supposedly destroyed their nuclear program last summer. And somehow their nuclear potential just became a war-worthy threat in February?

What news are you even reading? You are terribly misinformed or out of touch. Not all of it was destroyed. A lot of enriched uranium was saved. The IAEA still could not verify the stockpile's location, size, or composition due to denied access. Iran refused full inspections post-strikes.

The rest of your post is pure conjecture and nonsense.

The guy who said their nuclear program was destroyed last summer is the same guy who says we have to go to war to stop them from developing nuclear weapons now.

Do I believe it was actually destroyed? No. Do I believe the guy who said it was? No. Do I start believing that guy now that he says there’s an imminent threat? Also no.

It's pure conjecture that they are now collecting tolls from ships that transit the Strait of Hormuz? You don't think they're going to sprint for nukes at any cost now?

> What news are you even reading? You are terribly misinformed or out of touch.

What news are YOU reading?

https://time.com/article/2026/03/18/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nucle...

"As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement," Gabard wrote in an opening statement ahead of the hearing.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2026/03/19/ken...

Joe Kent, who made big news when he stepped down on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that intelligence assessments did not show Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States or was close to developing a nuclear weapon, undercutting central justifications for the military action.

Evil dictator who killed millions of people in his lifetime is also now dead.

He was 86 and is now, unfortunately, a beloved martyr rather than the symbol of an old and decaying regime.

>beloved

by whom? ROFL, good luck substantiating this claim

are we ignoring the fact that he massacred countless people for protesting against him THIS YEAR?

Trust me, I wish it weren't the case. Nobody likes being bombed and he's now a symbol of resistance. Most of the urban middle class has always hated the mullahs and various ethnic groups have conflict with the state as a whole, but Khamanei had and has support from basically every other element of society.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/polarised-ira...

[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/rare-moment-indias...

[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2026/3/1/thousands-in-iran...

More than half of the people who voted in the US voted for Trump. A lot of people in Iran most probably liked the old leadership there.

Replaced by his son.

>Replaced by his son.

Replaced by an enraged son whose whole family had been killed in front of him. Basically Iran's Ayatolah is now younger and angrier. Thanks to Trump and Israel's Trump.

Iranian people were about to topple their own regime some months ago. Now the regime is cemented again since Iran was attacked indiscriminately. Again, thank the 2 Trumps.

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