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Comment by nazgulsenpai | Hacker News Reader

This is just so incredibly embarrassing. We're now negotiating to end a war with a country we have claimed to have defeated like 500 times now, over terms that will not even just return the region to the pre-war status quo, but (most likely) giving them more power than they had when the first bombs were dropped. Not to mention shattering the illusion that the US can somehow protect the gulf states, along with most of our bases in the region and 13 US lives. Even if the US somehow recovers the enriched uranium they now claim was the motive, why would Iran not want to build nukes now? It would be suicidal not to.

(I say this with no sympathy to the Iranian government, just looking at reality.)

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> Why would Iran not want to build nukes now? It would be suicidal not to.

I feel like we have enough examples to be clear on this now, would you rather your country be treated by the major powers like Libya, Ukraine, Iraq... Or like North Korea.

That's a great point. This is also going to be disastrous for the case against nuclear proliferation, not just in Iran or the middle east -- especially when the co-aggressor has an undeclared nuclear stockpile.

I mean, Iran has been working on nukes for a while, and it has led them to a disastrous place of its own.

You could easily argue that the dictatorship is in a stronger place after getting nukes, but the act of building nukes have destabilized many regimes, including Iran. Iran could have been wealthy like UAE and the Saudis, with regional influence similar to Turkey, instead of being the punching bag of US and Israel.

It's reasonable to consider the counterfactual but it seems like the closest parallel here is Pakistan, which pulled off the gambit successfully.

The years leading up to and immediately following successful acquisition were tenuous and it seemed like they were destined to become a global pariah if not a failed state. And yet now, they are a regional power.

So if anything maybe Iran just missed its window. Now with the US seemingly ready to enter a forever war with no defined objectives other than nuclear deterrence it's presumably too late, but maybe a more competent regime could have pulled it off in time.

You’re not saying much. Iran could have not pursued this strategy that has turned them into a pariah, but they did

It was an active choice not a missed window

Apparently they restarted nuclear stuff because of the US supported Iran-Iraq war, so they never got the option to choose "nukes or punching bag", rather they were forced to choose nukes because they were already a punching bag.

They would have been a lot smarter if they didn't start and end every speech of the supreme leader with death to America, death to Israel - the two countries so motivated to have them not get nukes.

> (I say this with no sympathy to the Iranian government, just looking at reality.)

If we look at reality we see China is very active in Africa, and so also has undersea network cables (PEACE & 2Africa). If China allows this precedent to occur, they encourage any African nation nearby such cables to pull the same tricks on them. Hence a rational player in the shoes of China wouldn't allow this to happen. China should hint Iran that perhaps it should start addressing its real problems instead of making their problems someone else's problem again.

Putin and Trump have already made the world chaotic enough; don't let Xi get involved too.

Everybody is involved

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