Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
From what I can tell, international law requires attacks to be distinct and proportional. Distinct meaning they distinguish between civilian and military targets (you cannot intentionally attack civilian targets), and proportional meaning that the collateral damage to civilians is proportional to the military value of the strike.
This probably doesn’t meet that bar. Cutting off water is bad, but 20k people is a fairly small population for this kind of thing and presumably the US won’t stop them from repairing it (that probably would be a clear cut war crime). Presuming Irans government is functioning, this should be extremely hard for those people but probably not lethal. Trucking water around is an option, even if it’s not great.
At this point, every direct hit on a school or a water source or a charity being accidental collateral damage just doesn't ring true.
Either they've been lying about capabilities (and all the precision strikes were undergone with reckless disregard for human life) or they have the capabilities claimed and are doing exactly what they said they would.
[1] One famous example: https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-ter...
Btw: hitting water reservoirs is only a warcrime if the purpose is to kill (or at least replace) a civilian population from a large area. I don't see how this even qualifies that definition.
You need to have higher standards; "no worse than Iran" is not something the US should aspire to.
As for standards: they are useless unless they allow for doing what is required to make the other side comply. Or at least, without that standards won't achieve their goal.
The world has chosen to not enforce war crime legislation under any circumstances, decades ago. Specifically, the agreement is the Rome statute, which essentially says that no government can ever be accused of a warcrime except in one of two circumstances. One, the government one whose soil it happened agrees to enforce war crime legislation AND asks for a conviction (Iran has not, and will not, do this). Either that or the UNSC convicts you.
Other than those 2 situations, war crimes aren't possible. And this is not something the US has chosen but the world has agreed. If any parties are responsible for that, it's Russia and China.
By the way, Iran has managed to commit bad enough warcrimes that China, Russia, US, France and the UK all agreed they were guilty of warcrimes. The US has not.
Someone call Celestia! Magic for all!
Example: Somebody starts, or even threatens, to kill a child, you can empty a clip of bullets into them. You can break their bones. You can hit them with a bat. Hard. That's fine, sometimes even described as "heroic".
And if you empty a clip of bullets into a random person, well, that's against morality.
You can do a lot of things to such a person that would never be acceptable under normal circumstances. In fact, in western countries, violating normal rules to prevent worse outcomes than those rules are meant to achieve to is a duty. This goes from being forced to help if someone's in real trouble to if you are blocked by a red light and refuse to violate the law and prevent an ambulance's passage, that's a serious crime.
You read that right, under those specific circumstances not violating the law is a serious crime.
There is no moral or legal system that has an absolutist view like your statement makes. 12 year olds think like that. And of course, if you actually read this law, you won't find such an unqualified rule.
In other words: shooting someone to prevent a murder is not immoral. Despite the fact that shooting someone is obviously immoral under almost all circumstances.
That's not how ethics works. We give the state the ability to mete out punishment in cases where that punishment or the threat of that punishment helps the citizens' safety. Administering collective punishment does the opposite.
Military infrastructure should also not be dependent on civilian infrastructure as that blur the line between military and civilian.
It is an open question what media and thus we the public should do when nations ignore this. If a nation put military surveillance equipment onto fishing boats, like the Russian shadow fleet did, with some military personal onboard that operate the equipment, does that make the civilian fishermen also military personal, or should the military equipment and personal be treated as civilian since they are in a technically civilian ship?
I don't think the question we should ask is if people think hitting civilian drinking water as retaliation for a military helicopter is ok. It is obviously not ok and framing it like that only normalize the idea that hitting civilian targets could ever be acceptable. The only question we should be looking at is if the civilian infrastructure and military infrastructure was intentional built close to each other, thus making this two war crimes.
All civilian infrastructure is dual-use. Militaries will use civilian roads, highways, bridges, and airports when necessary. Militaries use civilian water facilities, buy fuel at civilian petrol stations, and power military equipment using the civilian electrical grid. Militaries frequently commandeer civilian infrastructure when necessary. Without providing a clear definition of what is civilian infrastructure and what is military infrastructure, all civilian infrastructure can be considered military infrastructure.
The side with $25M helicopters and $4m patriot missiles is at a big disadvantage to the side with $40K shaheeds here. Attrition favours the latter side. Assuming that both sides have stockpiles, the latter side will have more items in the stockpile, and will replenish it sooner. What happens when the air defences run out?
History often repeats itself. In a similar way, Great Powers like France refused to study the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 because it was something that happened in barbarian lands far away from glorious Europe, so it was obviously irrelevant to them, right? And then the shock of industrial warfare almost shattered the French army in summer 1914.
The US military is sitting on decades of older equipment. The Ukraine conflict started four years ago. Complaining that the US has not overhauled its inventory in just four years is unreasonable and unrealistic.
This has not seemed to be a problem for the countries using them; what makes the US so uniquely inefficient?
This shows that the US private sector can well produce contemporary drones on a compressed time scale.
It is the Pentagon which is not interested in overhauling settled vendor relations.
Ukraine deploys several million drones a year, you can't get there by mere artisan workshops in garages.
Sure, the designer teams back in Ukraine are lean, their members wear tracksuits and don't have a 50-head Human Resources to watch their behavior, nor three levels of managers wearing Philippe Patek above them. That is part of the efficiency and lower cost.
A basement lab can start making new drones as soon as you can get them the components. An assembly line will take months to get any new machinery it needs, set it up, ensure production works, figure out how to QA it at scale, etc.
It doesn’t matter if you can make 8 million drones if the enemy already has a way to counter that particular kind of drone. Eg I think Ukraine has been through a bunch of iterations as they adapt to Russian tank armor, jammers, extended range, etc.
Interesting that the Ukrainians can design, develop, produce and deploy a new type of a drone in something like 6 weeks.
Of course, they are in a life-or-death struggle and thus cannot afford a decade of paper wars with various lawyerly and MBA types who want to have their say.
That said, the US cannot afford those either, but it is under the illusion that it still can. Structural ossification at its best, and the result is ... inability to beat an impoverished, long sanctioned Middle-Eastern authoritarian regime into submission.
On Iran, describing the US as "inable" to win is structurally incorrect. The US could always win the war whenever it wants to. Same with Russia vs Ukraine. Both the USA and Russia have ICBMs. Neither choose to use them, for political reasons.
Yes, russia can win anytime. They simply decided to grind a million of russians instead.
ICBM is a deterrent, not a winning weapon.
The Ukrainian drone industry isn't particularly expensive, BTW, and mostly grew up from private sector grassroots. Ukrainian military has had its own share of problems with ossified Soviet-era leadership. They were able to route around these, though. The US does not want to do this so far; probably too much money involved, and not enough risk to rock those boats (or yachts).
On Iran, describing the US as "inable" to win is structurally incorrect. The US could always win the war whenever it wants to.
Are you sure, with the shortages of equipment that take years to replenish? In what sense? I am not even sure if the US has enough naval capability to make a D-day-like landing in Iran right now. That requires specialized ships and training.
The US could probably win the war if it went in fully: as you say, if it was fully mobilized and restructured into a war economy like Ukraine. But that is already quite a bad situation to be in. If a superpower needs to do this in order to fight someone like Iran, it is not really a (conventional) superpower anymore.
The US could also wipe Iran using nuclear missiles, but the political ramifications of such a step would be catastrophic.
So could Pakistan. Pakistan has enough nukes to wipe Iran off the Earth (not that they want to). But no one mistakes Pakistan for a superpower just because they have deliverable nukes.
Neither do you understand that the US has optimized its military around conflict against the PRoC. The US has fought multiple proxy wars against the PRoC. Arguably, the current Iran conflict is a proxy war against the PRoC. Future military spending is focused on countering China, not on the style of conflict Ukraine is facing.
That is why the US is phasing out military assets such as infantry forces and artillery, and is investing in unmanned vehicles and long-range missiles.
Further, you incorrectly quote and misinterpret what I wrote about ICBMs. The US (and Russia) could always win their current conflicts with ICBMs, but choose not to. That is a calculated choice, not an inability to win as you claim.
"Arguably, the current Iran conflict is a proxy war against the PRoC."
That is stretching it. The vast majority of weapons that Iran deployed were of their own build, and China sends nowhere near as much equipment to Iran as, say, Europe to Ukraine.
"Future military spending is focused on countering China, not on the style of conflict Ukraine is facing."
Which is part of the problem. As a wanna-still-be-superpower, the US will face a lot of diverse conflicts in the world, with various characteristics.
"The US is not optimized to fight such a war."
The US is not optimized to a bombing campaign against countries the size of Iran anymore either. You are literally running out of things to throw at them after mere weeks have passed.
Good luck fighting China then, with its 16x as big population and 100x as big economy than Iran has.
"The US (and Russia) could always win their current conflicts with ICBMs, but choose not to. That is a calculated choice, not an inability to win as you claim."
War is continuation of politics, not just destruction for its own sake. To win the war does not mean "utterly destroy a certain region", but "make the opponent do as you wish, at least in some aspects, against his will, while not suffering catastrophic consequences elsewhere".
If political constraints stop you from deploying WMDs, and you cannot achieve your political aims with conventional weapons, that counts as an inability to win the war. Can the US make the Iranian leadership drop their nuclear ambitions? It does not seems so. Can the US wipe Iran off the map? Yes, but at the cost of becoming a pariah nation, which is worse than ayatollahs having a few nukes. Only a fool would call the latter "victory".
Iran would not be able to pursue nuclear weapons nor missiles without China's assistance. The precursors of the missile fuel, the precursors of yellowcake processing, the chips and hardware of Iranian drones, all come from China with its assistance and blessing.
China has provided military equipment and weapons to Iran. China has military personnel in Iran operating air defense systems. It is accurate to call this a proxy war.
The fact you are unaware of any of this, demonstrates your lack of understanding of the conflict.
Further proof you do not comprehend US doctrine, is that the US can always escalate the conflict and pursue a ground war. But is hesitant to do so simply because Trump does not want war. Trump prefers quick, surgical operations; and does not want to drag the US into a forever war like Bush Jr and Obama did.
You keep claiming the US is "inable" to win the war, yet you do not understand the definition of this word. Choosing not do pursue a strategy for political reasons is not inable. The US would win a ground war against Iran, full stop. Your analysis fails to consider this option. But it would win at the cost of thousands of lives, and likely the US would need to occupy the country, which is politically challenging, and Trump is savvy enough to be hesitant to pursue this option.
You also lack historical understanding of war. You forget that total destruction and capitulation was the default strategy of war for millenia, see strategies of the Mongols or the war against Japan, where the US firebombed and leveled Japanese cities, even nuking them, until capitulation.
You seem to be stuck on repeat with "don't understand, don't understand, don't understand". Yet it seems to me that it is you who got sucked into some bizarro understanding of war being fundamentally an annihilation contest between the two parties involved. This very shallow understanding is now somewhat widespread in the blogosphere and pushed by, again, shallow types like Stephen Miller. Claims like "total destruction and capitulation was the default strategy of war for millenia" are just not true. It happened sometimes, but quite often also not, because warring parties always have some limits to their effort, be it ideological, economic or political limits. And this was no less true in Antiquity than today.
Outside the bizarro "total destruction" corner, war between organized states has been understood primarily as a continuation of politics, with the goal to make your enemy do something that they don't want to. Even the Mongols you mentioned usually gave a besieged city an option to surrender, because their primary goal wasn't simply to kill, but to conquer and rule.
Yes, there are exceptions (Carthago delenda est), but these exceptions aren't the historical rule.
Let us look at the situation in Iran now.
The US seems to want something from Iran. It is not very clear what, but probably free movement of ships through Hormuz, nuclear disarmament and maybe even regime change.
It also does NOT want to genocide the Persians out of existence. While doable, it would carry a heavy reputational penalty and cause significant friction back at home. Not even Trump wants to add tens of millions of civilian lives to his conscience, hence WMDs are out of question.
A ground invasion is thinkable, but I am much less persuaded about its efficiency than you are. As you yourself say, this has a risk of turning into a forever war and the US isn't equipped, mentally nor doctrinally, to fight forever wars.
Which means that you likely won't get what you want from the current Iranian leadership by the sort of military means you can feasibly use against them, and that is not a victory.
Please give me a plausible scenario in which the current US is capable of winning a ground war against Iran in the presence of all the current political limitations, which are quite fundamental. You can't.
Ultimately it does not matter if you can't win because you cannot muster the political will to engage in a costly war, or if you can't win because you run out of Tomahawks (both are correlated, btw). It is still an inability to win, which is obviously detrimental to the US imperial standing.
First, a large scale bombing campaign, targeting Iranian infrastructure.
Dropping bombs on every power substation, fuel plant, and generation plant would cripple the economy, and grind the country to a halt. A similar strategy was applied to Japan and Germany in WWII. If these facilities have military purpose, destroying these facilities is not necessarily a war crime.
A modern economy cannot function without fuel and electricity. The economy will quickly grind to a halt, and Iran will be forced to confront internal problems before mounting a concerted response.
After 2-3 weeks of chaos, the US would launch a ground invasion, though Pakistan and Iraq. It would then remove the nuclear material, clean up Iranian missiles that target ships in the strait, and the US would leave.
It achieves the primary, secondary, and tertiary goals of the war: no more nuclear weapons, removal of nuclear material, and reopening of the strait.
Combat losses to the US would be minimal. The cost for Iran, though, is astronomically high. It would take years for the country to rebuild, and set back the nation economically for decades.
Trump is trying hard to avoid this option. Many other presidents (I'd wager Kamela) would have gone down this path by now.
The necessary buildup would take several months and would happen within range of Iranian drones.
Neither Iraq nor Pakistan seem to be particularly likely to grant a permission to the US to stage a large-scale land operation against Iran from their own territory. Both have large populations partly sympathetic to the mullahs, the political destabilization caused by taking the side of "infidels" against the "faithful", plus suffering Iranian drone retaliation, would be just too costly for them.
"First, a large scale bombing campaign, targeting Iranian infrastructure."
The US already did that and emptied its arsenals to dangerously low levels. Were they replenished? Probably not yet, this is what we are discussing here; the military-industrial complex in America has grown fat and complacent and cannot quickly increase production beyond the very low level optimized out by post-Cold-War MBAs.
"Combat losses to the US would be minimal."
Uncertain. The US could probably swallow its pride and go to Kyiv to shop for anti-drone know-how and technology. In that case, the combat losses would be lower. If people like Vance and Trump cannot do that, I would rather expect the US losses to be at least in lower tens of thousands. A million cheap FPV drones can do a lot of dirty work, and this is probably the stuff that China can send to the IRGC quite quickly.
Iran would be paralyzed without fuel and electricity, GDP would collapse by 90%, and within days, there would be large social unrest. The IRGC would be too distracted managing unrest to mount a concerted response.
The US and allies would spend the next few weeks amassing forces, then would invade along multiple axises (from the east and west). Pakistan would join the war, as it is obligated under the Saudi/Pakistani mutual self-defense treaty.
Forces would then remove the nuclear material, clean up Iranian missiles that target ships in the strait, and the US would leave.
It doesn't take a four star general to understand why a ground invasion sucks. By the time Marines land in Bandar Abbas, the HEU is halfway to an underground vault in Magnitogorsk. The remaining job of securing UF6 rubble, locating spare centrifuges and dismantling their enrichment loop is pointless. There is no option to "remove the nuclear material" that reasonably deters Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. The JCPOA was a more workable framework than this blockade has proven to be.
> If that strategy was the only strategy, then it would have already been done
No, it's not done because the US is averse to combat losses. The US will win a ground war against Iran, there's no question here. But it will do so at significant loss, in the thousands of lives.
Trump is politically savvy enough to not desire this option.
> banking on social unrest has failed
The social unrest strategy was never implemented. It was hinted at happening, Iranians were told to wait until told to resume protesting, but the green light was never given.
> By the time Marines land in Bandar Abbas
The marines can't land at Bandar Abbas, a cursory look at the geography shows it makes no sense to land here; a ground invasion would start from Pakistan or Iraq.
> the HEU is halfway to an underground vault in Magnitogorsk.
Why would Iran voluntarily give up its Uranium stockpiles to Russia? There is no strategic benefit.
> The remaining job of securing UF6 rubble, locating spare centrifuges and dismantling their enrichment loop is pointless.
False, it is not possible to build a nuclear weapon without a significant amount of accompanying infrastructure; there is enormous strategic value to destroying Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
> There is no option to "remove the nuclear material" that reasonably deters Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.
False, doing so would set back the Iranian nuclear program by ten to twenty years; which is long enough for another president to revisit the issue.
While in the country, the US would also dismantle the Iranian missile stockpile, destroying thousands of missiles that could target neighboring countries.
And JCPOA has its own issues, JCPOA was fundamentally flawed, it never addressed the Iranian missile problem, which is equally as large an issue as the Iranian nuclear problem.
Every single preceding president before him is "politically savvy" enough to not desire it. Trump is unique in that he is actively considering it, when Iran does not legitimately threaten the United States with their nuclear weapons or ballistic missile program. Regardless of how you feel, the allegations of this being a proxy war are hard to write off.
> The social unrest strategy was never implemented.
It was certainly implemented at least once, the Mossad admit to abetting the protests in Tehran. The effectiveness of this strategy is called into question now that many of those high-profile dissidents are jailed or dead. And we know for a fact that the Kurds want Trump to pound sand, so they're not some sort of ace-up-the-sleeve as many expected.
> The marines can't land at Bandar Abbas
That wasn't the point I'm making. How will the US amass troops for any invasion without triggering flight risk for the HEU?
> Why would Iran voluntarily give up its Uranium stockpiles to Russia?
Because they've already done it once before? https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/world/middleeast/iran-han...
> it is not possible to build a nuclear weapon without a significant amount of accompanying infrastructure
Like the tens-of-thousands of centrifuges that Iran manufactures domestically? I don't think the US can stop them from building those without some form of diplomatic understanding. They can tear up their underground facilities, but those can also be rebuilt around shorter cascade loops and simpler, weapons-oriented enrichment.
> doing so would set back the Iranian nuclear program by ten to twenty years
I do not see any citation or explanation for this. It might set back parts of their civilian program, but it wouldn't prevent them from developing their HEU into a dirty-bomb style of weapon.
> While in the country, the US would also dismantle the Iranian missile stockpile
> it never addressed the Iranian missile problem
That's Israel's issue. Iran has not targeted the continental United States once, nor do they have any apparent intention to. Iran has domestic solid fuel production, metallurgists and steel presses that all have to be removed, which is a huge undertaking that doesn't prevent them from making more. Simple MLRS style rocket artillery can be made out of scrap, in an invasion scenario it wouldn't prevent Iran from building and deploying new missiles.
It's very easy for the United States to document and enforce a diplomatic solution to Iran's missile attacks, if the goal is stopping them. The JCPOA did not include missiles because it's a separate issue altogether - this would have been an opportunity for Trump to find a politically savvy solution to this, but now we're creeping towards a forever war.
Nope, I understand quite well. I also understand that your picture of current US capabilities is too rosy.
The current US military simply does not have enough assets to do that without dangerously overstretching its commitments elsewhere. They already had to withdraw some missiles from the Far East to compensate for what was used during March.
The US armaments industry is nowhere near where it was during WWII in terms of current capacity, and its future capacity ramp-up is slooooow. Not enough qualified people, for starters. Many necessary components are produced overseas. Too much red tape and not enough willingness from the government to commit to large orders in the future.
In order to build a new factory, you need to be sure that the government will be buying the products for ~15-20 years, but the voters don't support this sort of military expenditure. They want more Medicare and Social Security, not unlike Europeans, and less military spending.
Even if the US decided to supercharge spending on its military, the lead-in time to build those factories is at least two years.
BTW your assertion that the Allies destroyed German industrial capacity is flat wrong. This is exactly the shallow understanding of history I was talking about. Dive into some actual historical sources on strategic bombing.
The Allies mostly destroyed living quarters of German workers, but Germany actually reached peak armaments production in 1944 and the occupying forces were surprised by finding the factories in good order and full of new machines.
What really broke Germany's back was physical loss of territory, severe lack of important resources like oil (caused by physical loss of control of Romania), molybden (which made their first jet engines unreliable) and a significant loss of people. But its industry was working quite reliably until Stunde Null. They moved the most critical factories underground and that was it.
One of the reasons why West Germany was so swiftly reintegrated into Europe was that their industrial capacity was necessary for post-war buildup. During the Marshall Plan years, Germany was the only European nation where the average age of industrial equipment was under 5 years.
The strategy, which Trump chose not to pursue, is the total destruction of Iran's energy and fuel infrastructure.
This strategy was used against Germany and Japan by destroying their industrial capacity; though to a lesser extent.
The allies did not target German electrical production, which was a massive strategic oversight. Post war analysis concluded that if the allies targeted <12 electrical transformer stations in 1943, it would have paralyzed German heavy industry within weeks. The war would have concluded a year earlier.
This strategy calls for precision targeting of Iran's electrical and fuel infrastructure.
Iran would be paralyzed without fuel and electricity. GDP would collapse by 90%.
It is not possible to run a modern economy without fuel or electricity. Communications are largely cut. Fuel will quickly run out. Shortages would rapidly ensue.
Protests would begin immediately, and the IRGC would be forced to divert resources to manage the chaos. During this period, the US would launch a ground invasion, and retrieve the buried nuclear material.
Iran would not be able to mount a coordinated response, and combat losses would be far lower than if the US mounted a traditional invasion.
That is beyond absurd claim. But, if it was true, then the USA is loosing even more badly. This war is helping exactly two countries - Russia and China.
> The US (and Russia) could always win their current conflicts with ICBMs, but choose not to.
This is copium and in both cases. If Russia could win that conflict, if it could take over, it would do it. If USA could win, they would do it. Heck, if USA was able to walk away from the conflict, at this point it would. It just so happen that Israel does not want to allow it and Iran thinks they are getting into better position with each passing week.
It's easy to list these off the top of my head. There are multiple. Obviously the Korean War, China sent over a million personnel to aid the DPRK and directly battled the US. The Vietnam war was a proxy war, China had over 300,000 troops in North Vietnam, preventing the US from invading the north and ending the conflict. The Russia/Ukraine war is a double-proxy war; both the US and China are arming their respective sides.
The current conflict is also a proxy war. Without China's support for Iran, this war could not have happened. China provides the precursors for Iranian missile fuel, Iran purchased tons of sodium perchlorate from China; China provides the chemicals that are needed for yellowcake and Iran's nuclear program; China provides the parts for Iran's drone program. China also provides the anti-aircraft systems that Iran uses, though so far these have proven to be questionably effective. China has an active part in this conflict, there are Chinese military personnel in Iran actively maintaining their radar systems.
Without China, there are no missiles, there are no nukes, there are no drones. There is no war.
And claiming China benefits from this war is myopic. China has massive investments across the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The war in Iran directly affects the value of these investments, and China's support for Iran is alienating Middle Eastern countries. China is trying to play both sides, but that is not a viable long term strategy.
The previous poster is claiming the US is 'inable' to end the war with Iran; this is trivially false, the US has ICBMs, and can trivially end the war. You have listed the consequences of doing so, yet I was responding to their claim, which is separate matter.
You can say the same about other countries trading with Iran. Also Iran had missiles before China started to be a global player.
> The current conflict is also a proxy war. Without China's support for Iran, this war could not have happened.
This is nonsense. War happened with or without Chinas support, because American leadership and Israel wanted it. Iran was not attacked because of Chinese support, Iran was attacked because USA and Israel thought Iran will be easy to defeat.
> Without China, there are no missiles, there are no nukes, there are no drones. There is no war.
Without China, USA would still be starting the war.
> And claiming China benefits from this war is myopic. China has massive investments across the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The war in Iran directly affects the value of these investments, and China's support for Iran is alienating Middle Eastern countries.
China is gaining through USA loosing position, wasting missiles and alienating, well pretty much everyone.
> The previous poster is claiming the US is 'unable' to end the war with Iran; this is trivially false, the US has ICBMs, and can trivially end the war.
USA is in fact unable to end the war with Iran. Trump would very much like to end it ... he just cant.
Call me pedantic but it just makes it unpleasant to read.
Small beer in the greater scheme ... and unable to be edited / corrected by the user in question some 12 hours after the comment.
If you're realy that upsit, cun I seggust you emraile HN @ Ycombingnater and ask for a m0d to intravein?
I'm not aware of how long anyone has been on HN, bar a very small number of users. Who can be bothered to check histories for everyone you comment to?
Fair point about not being able to edit.
>If you're realy that upsit
Thank you for using the correct "you're". :)
For 1), the US isn't in a hurry because there's no actual threat. The lack of drone warfare capabilities only impacts US action overseas and of the little bipartisan consensus left, one thing is clear: no new wars (Trump's Iran war is seen as betrayal from his own party but it's hard to oppose Dear Leader).
For 2), it's hard to win when you don't know what you're doing or declare victory when you don't know what your goals are. I'm not sure there's even domestic agreement that it's a war.
2) I concur, there seem to be no actual goals there. There is a Croatian saying that "form whomever who doesn't know where he wants to sail, no wind is useful". This fits.
"If your immediate plan is to stop fighting in far away places, then drones aren't really a worry."
Yes, you can dismantle the entire coalition your presidents put together for 70+ years, but at some cost. The US economy is heavily intertwined with the rest of the world, and it probably cannot decouple from China AND forty democratic countries that used to be US allies at the same time.
Might be cheaper just to respect the current entanglements, at least in the long run.
Furthermore, Choppers arent obsolete and if you got em, it makes sense go use them.
Currently it's hard for any nation to meaningfully adapt, as the new tech develops far faster than any governement procurment process.
Both UA and RU still operate helicopters, but their survival envelope has tightened drastically and they won't even try to fly a chopper over a wide body of water anywhere near the enemy. To survive in a drone-infested war theatre, a chopper must fly really low and mask itself using terrain features as much as possible.
Component / part Company Company country Public factory / manufacturing-origin info
TJ150 turbojet engine PBS Velka Bites Czechia EU Czechia; manufacturer is PBS Velka Bites
TW1721 GNSS antennas, block of 4 Calian / Tallysman Canada Canada / West Ottawa, Canada manufacturing publicly stated by Calian/Tallysman
AD9361BBCZ RF transceiver Analog Devices USA USA COO/assembly: South Korea; wafer diffusion: Taiwan
MIMXRT1052 microcontroller NXP USA / NXP USA / Netherlands West Distributor COO often China; NXP PCN references SMIC8 40nm wafer fab
N63A0QI chip Intel USA USA Exact COO not found publicly
STM32F405 microcontroller units STMicroelectronics Switzerland / France / Italy Europe / Switzerland Probably Manufactured in China
ADIS16480 inertial measurement unit Analog Devices USA USA COO: Philippines; ADI PCN adds IMI Philippines as approved assembly site
TMS320F28335PGFA microcontroller Texas Instruments USA USA COO/assembly: Philippines; wafer diffusion: Japan
The "evidence?" Someone found an unexploded IED that had a component with a logo that's familiar to probably every EE in the Western world: Texas Instruments!
Problem is that it was a generic "jellybean" 74LS logic IC that's churned out by the millions and sold everywhere, to everyone and also made by a dozen other manufacturers. Hell, I probably had a dozen or so in my parts drawers.
The drawback to having easily obtainable electronic components is that the people you don't like can also get them.
tragedy.
If the entire world was Dutch we'd be colonising the stars by now...
Keynes lived through two world wars and learned that global trade does not in fact mean that nations won't irrationally attack each other. In Keynes' view, the purpose of the economy is to lift up the average person out of poverty, and is so doing greatly eliminate one of the causes of war.
Just a few decades after world war 2 Friedman would come along and talk about the power of "freedom" (ie, keeping the current status quo). He would repeat the ideological lies that led to people being unprepared for WW1 / WW2, namely being that free trade means nations won't attack each other, that there is a price at which racism is reasonable, among many other things.
Friedman on segregation for example:
“...consider a situation in which there are grocery stores serving a neighborhood inhabited by people who have a strong aversion to being waited on by Negro clerks. Suppose one of the grocery stores has a vacancy for a clerk and the first applicant qualified in other respects happens to be a Negro. Let us suppose that as a result of the law the store is required to hire him. The effect of this action will be to reduce the business done by this store and to impose losses on the owner. If the preference of the community is strong enough, it may even cause the store to close. When the owner of the store hires white clerks in preference to Negroes in the absence of the law, he may not be expressing any preference or prejudice, or taste of his own. He may simply be transmitting the tastes of the community. He is, as it were, producing the services for the consumers that the consumers are willing to pay for. Nonetheless, he is harmed, and indeed may be the only one harmed appreciably, by a law which prohibits him from engaging in this activity, that is, prohibits him from pandering to the tastes of the community for having a white rather than a Negro clerk. The consumers, whose preferences the law is intended to curb, will be affected substantially only to the extent that the number of stores is limited and hence they must pay higher prices because one store has gone out of business.”
The drones run on literally whatever is available because any Western-built one is restricted to Iran or Russia.
Big sky theory says otherwise.
Given the US government's spiraling disregard for factuality, it's safe to assume any loss of equipment or personell in the area of operations is hostile, not accidental.
"A new AH-64E has a base flyaway cost of $35 million to $50 million, but international packages often exceed $100 million." [2]
So probably slightly older models.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-64_Apache
[2] - https://www.wionews.com/photos/apache-helicopter-cost-vs-pow...
The USA is the Russia of the West nowadays.
(I would add that this is sarcasm, but it is reality for a lot of people sadly)
This is why you don't used manned systems to hunt unmanned ones ...
Why does Iran have the right to fire drones into other countries?
If America hadn't started bombing Iran in the first place this wouldn't have happened anyway. Things would have been peaceful and oil prices would have been fine.
Did you forget the purpose of the war?
Such a dumb lie.
While following JCPOA, Iran decided to build tens of thousands of conventional missiles and drones instead. Enough to swarm and overwhelm air defense systems. 1000 conventional missiles cause as much infrastructure damage as a single nuclear warhead. Iran basically bypassed JCPOA, and built the equivalent to a nuke with conventional weapons.
Obama had the choice to negotiate missile limits in JCPOA, but chose not to, because he wanted a quick politcal win, without realizing the future consequences.
And if you think paying a country tens of billions of dollars not to develop a nuke is a great deal, that incentives every other country to develop their own nuclear weapons.
Iran was never paid any money, sanctions were lifted. Are you able to state a truthful point at all?
In 2016, Iran was paid $1.7 billion in cash as a result of the nuclear deal, and regained control of $100-$150 billion in assets.
CNN: "US sent plane with $400 million in cash to Iran" Aug 4, 2016 https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-...
President Barack Obama approved the $400 million transfer, which he had announced in January as part of the Iran nuclear deal. The money was flown into Iran on wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros and other currencies as the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement.
US officials said cash had to be flown in because existing US sanctions ban American dollars from being used in a transaction with Iran and because Iran could not access the global financial system due to international sanctions it was under at the time.
The money was procured from central banks in Switzerland and the Netherlands, official said, and an unmarked cargo plane loaded with Swiss francs, euros and other currencies were flown to Iran.
At the same time [as the January cash delivery], the White House unfroze a larger pool of Iranian assets, estimated at $100 to $150 billion, as part of the nuclear deal, though administration officials cautioned that Iran would only pocket about $50 billion after legal claims.
>The $400 million was Iran’s to start with, placed into a US-based trust fund to support American military equipment purchases in the 1970s. When the Shah was ousted by a 1979 popular uprising that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic, the US froze the trust fund. Iran has been fighting for a return of the funds through international courts since 1981.
>Are you able to state a truthful point at all?
Seems like a firm no on this one. All you have done is spout right wing talking points that are not based in reality and are even dismantled by the very article you sent but didn't read past the headline. Perhaps take a step back and consider what you are doing and if you are living in reality or not.
But the rest of your argument doesn't hold up. The $100-150 billion in assets returned to Iran dwarfs everything else. Iran received an enormous amount of money contingent on nuclear compliance, which incentivizes every other country to start a nuclear program for future leverage. With JCPOA, Iran literally got paid for having a nuclear weapons program.
You still haven't addressed the JCPOA missile and drone issue. Seems like you're avoiding it. JCPOA had zero restrictions on missiles or drones. Iran used the tens of billions it received from the deal to build its Shahed drone fleet and tens of thousands of missiles specifically designed to overwhelm air defenses. Plus, the 15-year sunset clause on enrichment guaranteed the nuclear problem would return anyway. The 2026 war is the direct result of this failed deal.
The rest is Irans own money sitting in Irans own accounts that sanctions prohibited them from moving or using. Is your reasoning that the US paid Iran with Irans own money because they didn't decide to steal their money? You realize how insane this makes you look?
The deal was a first step in normalizing diplomatic relations with Iran, it wasn't perfect but its a good first step, and as US intelligence testified to congress, they were not working on a nuclear bomb. Or do you disagree with them? The war is a direct result of Trump/Israel starting the war after exiting the deal and ending diplomatic relationships. You see how its a situation entirely created by them?
I don't care about missiles or whatever else you bring up. If it wasn't nuclear programs, building missiles, you and Netanyahu would move the goalpost to something else.
The money thing you keep circling back to doesn't matter either way. Whether it was technically Iran's own frozen assets or not, JCPOA gave Iran tens of billions dollars in liquidity, all of it tied to the JCPOA deal, and this money is what literally paid for the Shahed fleet and the missile stockpiles. JCPOA is how Iran paid for the tens of thousands of Iranian drones, and thousands of missiles. Money is fungible, the IRGC doesn't care where that money came from. It only matters to Iran that it received the money.
And "intelligence said they were complying" proves nothing. Complying with what? Enrichment limits that expire in 2030 and a stupid deal that never even mentioned drones or missiles.
If I were to provide a reasonable argument for you it would be that Iran would have received their money and refused additional diplomatic relations and negotiations and then when the prohibitions expired continued to work on a nuclear bomb. The goalpost was already moved long ago as they moved on to missiles after enrichment was stopped. If it had included missiles they would move on to something else.
But we'll never know because Trump sabotaged the agreement and torched any potential future diplomatic solution, engineering the situation where war seems reasonable to people like you. And its not like Iran wouldn't want to continue selling their oil or continue trading globally.
I keep "circling back" to the money as you keep spouting nonsense about it. Is your argument really that because the US didn't steal their money they "paid" it to Iran? Or would you like to explain yourself? Or are you just misunderstanding what the word paid means?
Its irrelevant that US intelligence agencies said they were complying with JCPOA that could have been extended? Who should we listen to, Netanyahu? Who has been screeching about Iran having a nuke by next week for 4 decades.
You build my argument for me: Iran banks the relief, refuses to renegotiate, and resumes the nuclear program when the limits expire in 2030. Then, instead of reasoning about what 2030 actually looks like, you wave it off with "we'll never know." Fine, that's your hypothetical, not your belief. But the expiration on the enrichment restrictions is real. It's a date in the text. Calling the scenario hypothetical doesn't make that date disappear.
And "could have been extended" is carrying enormous weight for you with nothing backing it. There was no extension mechanism in JCPOA. Extending it meant a fresh round of negotiations, and Iran's own officials called the sunsets non-negotiable. So what is Iran's incentive to agree to re-cap enrichment in 2030, after it has already pocketed the relief and the sanctions are long over? "Could have been extended" is something you invented, it was not a feature of the deal. You're defending JCPOA by imagining a better agreement that was never on paper.
So let's actually run your scenario. Assume JCPOA holds. Both sides follow it to the T for the full term. What's is the situation in 2030? Iran has spent fifteen years selling oil freely (with nearly a trillion dollars in cumulative oil revenue) and its frozen assets released and its economy rebuilt. And because the deal said nothing about drones or missiles, it spent those same fifteen years building an enormous arsenal of hundreds of thousands of drones and over ten thousand missiles, several times what it has today. On the nuclear limit, it complied. On drones and missiles, it also complied. Because there was no limit.
And we know what Iran intended to do with that pause, because Iran showed us by what it kept. In 2018 Mossad stole the entire nuclear-weapons archive hidden in a warehouse in Tehran. Iran chose to preserve that archive, it did not destroy it. You don't keep the blueprints for a program you've abandoned. JCPOA failed to end Iran's weapons ambition, it simply kicked the can down the road, leaving a mess for a future president to handle.
Now run the renegotiation you're banking on. It's 2030, the caps have ended, and the US comes to the table. With what? In 2015 the leverage was sanctions relief. In 2030, what does the US have to offer? Iran is flush with cash, it spent the past decade arming, and it has reintegrated itself into the global economy. Iran has no reason to re-cap anything and every reason to walk. "We'll just extend it" assumes you can sell a deal to someone you have no leverage over. You can't. The leverage was already used pursuing JCPOA the first time.
And by 2030 the military option is all but closed too. The Iran of 2030 under JCPOA has a missile and drone arsenal five to ten times the size of what we saw this year. And this year's arsenal was already enough to choke shipping through Hormuz and ensue an oil crisis. An Iran with 5-10x that capability is an Iran with an economic nuke. Iran will have a guaranteed ability to put a chokehold on the global economy, at a far greater scale than the crisis seen today, and the past few months demonstrated Iran is willing to do this. A fully armed Iran has so many missiles and drones that it will overwhelm interceptor defenses even on the first salvo. You witnessed what happened in the 2026 conflict. Interceptors were barely able to keep up, and there was an interceptor shortage crisis. Yet fortunately, in the 2026 conflict, interceptors did not run out, and approximately 80-90% of missiles and drones were intercepted. But an Iran under JCPOA would be able to launch salvos at 5-10x the size, absolutely overwhelming interceptor defenses, and the quantity of destruction would be an order of magnitude greater. There is no defense against that amount of firepower. Striking an Iran sitting on that much firepower and the cost of a military intervention stops being acceptable to anyone.
That's the deal you're defending. And even if JCPOA succeeds, the outcome is still a loss. Follow JCPOA perfectly, and 2030 Iran arrives rich, rearmed, un-leverageable, and legally free to enrich. The cost of any military operation to encourage Iran to comply is astronomically high, making Iran is immune to any conventional military intervention. JCPOA traded away everything the West had to offer: cash, sanctions relief, and oil market access; in exchange for a temporary enrichment pause and a prisoner swap. JCPOA never resolved anything, and simply kicked the can down the road for a future administration to deal with, from a far worse negotiating position.
Art of the deal, lol.
The purpose of the war was keeping Netanyahu in power by having a constant war going on. And Trump went along because he was promised a quick win which he could have used to turn his midterms around.
tristanj 3 hours ago [dead] | root | parent | next [–]
> Iran was nowhere near having nuclear weapons. No, that's outdated. Iran had ~440kg of uranium enriched to 60%, enough for 9-10 nuclear weapons enriched to weapons grade. Given Iran's enormous centrifuge fleet, enrichment to enough material for a single weapons grade nuke would take 2-3 days. To enrich the entire amount would take 2-3 weeks.
This comes straight from the 2025 IAEA report.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...
60% enriched material is very highly enriched, it's approximately ~98-99% of the way to weapons grade, in terms of total work required.
We all know how cascade enrichment works, having 20% or 60% enrichment is still not equivalent to having the bomb. It is directly commensurate to the "Iran is N weeks away from the bomb!" because people are just extrapolating enrichment time without any other metrics included.
Which numbers? "enough for 9-10 nuclear weapons" is a stupid figure, you could come up with similar scare quotes for raw uranium ore if you extrapolated the refinement process. It's a dishonest tactic that has been tossed around for decades without much meaning.
The upstream claim that Iran would have ICBMs with nuclear warheads is just not true. Iran does not have any credible ICBM in their inventory, nor a known reentry vehicle, nor a strategy that would enable them to fight anyone besides regional powers like Israel. I did not flag their comments, but this kind of extraordinary "flood the zone" logic is consistent with what HN ends up flagging in the long run.
No, that's outdated. Iran had ~440kg of uranium enriched to 60%, enough for 9-10 nuclear weapons enriched to weapons grade. Given Iran's enormous centrifuge fleet, enrichment to enough material for a single weapons grade nuke would take 2-3 days. To enrich the entire amount would take 2-3 weeks.
This comes straight from the 2025 IAEA report.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri...
Or, you could be very, very stupid and start bombing like maniacs. Without a plan, without allies and without justification.
During ongoing negotiations as well, making you SO UNBELIEVABLY untrustworthy that NO-ONE will EVER trust this idiotic regime ever again.
The stupidity is astounding.
Bibi says this for 30+ years and there are no ICBMs.
Iran's nuclear-capable Khorramshahr-4 missile has a range of up to 4,000 km [0], and the requirement for an ICBM is above 5,500 km. So you are technically correct.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iranian_strike_on_Diego_G...
And they torched JCPOA – even with your arguments it was weak, it appears to have been more effective than doing nothing for years and then spending billions to stop them when they, completely foreseeably, stop following an agreement that the US broke first. https://armscontrolcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ira...
I'm rambling and don't know all that much, so to the point of your question: the conflict started because Trump and his people wanted to, and it feels sort of pointlessly speculative and hopeful to ascribe your own interpretations beyond that.
I guess we'll see, if it really ends, and what the new regime, sanctions, nuclear enforcement, etc look like. If there are any career bureaucrats left, maybe they'll pull off something good.
The reason JCPOA got torched was because documents stolen by Mossad revealed Iran was caught systematically lying to the IAEA about the depth of its nuclear weapons program for decades. Iran operated multiple sites that Iran denied existed to the IAEA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_infiltration_of_an_Ira...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa... It's kind of a cheap shot at this point, but my point is why should we trust them today if 1 year ago they said the program was set back by years?
> Wikipedia: The majority of the documents were created between 1999 and 2003, after which the AMAD Project was halted and Iran's nuclear weapons research program was cancelled
> the documents contained no revelations about recent nuclear activity
Granted, additional background on the past affects trust levels in the present, but to be clear, AFAICT it was not showing violations of JCPOA. Maybe there is something worse that's classified.
At this point, every country with the ability to do so should be procuring nuclear deterrence capability, if for no other reason than to defend themselves from the US.
Why should Iran be allowed to develop nuclear weapons in the first place?
You're going to have to specifically address why ending the program with no replacement was better than letting it continue. Your other comments about cost, lack of conventional weapon limits, and perverse incentives for other countries doesn't do much for me. (For one thing, other countries aren't very relevant to this discussion, unless the cost of paying them off were to actually become prohibitive.) It was something, it had some positive effect on the "Iran can't have nukes" you keep harping on, and it was replaced with nothing but sanctions. Why wouldn't they resume development?
Continued sanctions were a viable answer, the reason they failed is because Biden relaxed them at the beginning of his term, allowing Iran to resume oil sales and he also paid Iran $5B in exchange for hostages.
I don't think it's fair to say he predicted all of its consequences when he also hoped the next president/congress would cancel it, and they did. Did he foresee that it would only last 3 out of the 10-15 years it was supposed to run, but that would be enough to doom us? Or would it have worked out better if it lasted?
Maybe you are right that the sanctions lift built them into a threat, but it still feels stupid there was an agreement in effect, Trump destroyed it, and 10 years later the best we can hope for is they agree again to give up their biggest lever and with sanctions this time. I don't think that will go well.
Arguably it's a weakness of the US system, or the particular laws in this case, that, whichever of JCPOA or sanctions was best, either can be undone at the next election. Rubio implied that's a strength though.
It is prescient that he predicted a lunatic would possess nuclear weapons and act according to apocalyptic religious beliefs, he just didn't say he would be working for the lunatic.
Maybe because the Israel-US axis decided it was a good idea to start bombing them earlier this year? Could be that?
Perhaps, and this is a long shot, they see military equipment close to their border as a threat?
People get weird like that when countries start bombing their schoolgirls into minced meat.
This entire conflict was fully avoidable if Iran never pursued nuclear weapons.
Why can't Iran just be a normal country, and not pursue nuclear weapons?
Is that a good excuse to turn schoolgirls into minced meat?
Also, let's not pretend this started in a vacuum. The US has been interfering in Iran for many decades.
> This entire conflict was fully avoidable if Iran never pursued nuclear weapons.
> Why can't Iran just be a normal country, and not pursue nuclear weapons?
If anything, history shows that every country should pursue Nuclear weapons.
That is the best insurance policy one can have against the US.
Is Iran in a better position after firing missiles at Azerbaijan, Oman, and Turkey? All three of these countries were neutral or friendly towards Iran, until Iran fired missiles at each unprompted.
Its current situation is largely self-inflicted, and a result of poor foreign policy choices.
> If anything, history shows that every country should pursue Nuclear weapons.
Why stop there, we should give every person on Earth nuclear weapons.
That policy will lead to world peace, since there will be no world left to live in.
Nice to show how ignorant of history you are.
Attacking the majority of your neighbors in 2026, including countries who are pursuing friendly relations to you, is a stupid foreign policy.
Azerbaijan has no US military bases, it has no Israeli military bases, it has no ties to the current conflict, yet Iran still fired drones at a school in Azerbaijan, without justification.
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense stated that four Iranian drones attacked Nakhchivan, one of which was neutralized by the Azerbaijani army while others targeted civilian infrastructure. One drone fell on the terminal building of Nakhchivan International Airport, while another landed near a school building in the village of Shakarabad, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, resulting in damage to the airport and injuries to four civilians.
Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and Iranian diplomat Kazem Gharibabadi denied that Iran had attacked Azerbaijan. Araghchi suggested that it was an Israeli false flag operation to draw Azerbaijan into the conflict with Iran.
In the volume of drones fired this appears as little more than four wayward drones targeted as a result of an accident or miscommunication - the best guesses being bad intel about an anti Iran meeting or a deliberate false flag.
Dubai airport was struck four or five times. Qatar's LNG facilities. Kuwait's desalination plants. Bahrain's bridges. Saudi pumping stations. UAE power plants. Oman oil storage. You haven't mentioned any of these.
Back to Azerbaijan - your own explanation convicts Iran. Claiming the strikes were due to "bad intel about an anti Iran meeting" -- do you even realize what you are saying? That means that Iran chose to fire drones at a target on Azerbaijani soil. That's the definition of an attack. You are proving my point.
And Iran's FM denying it and blaming Israel is precisely what Iran does every single time. They've run that same story dozens of times on attributed strikes. Using that as your defense shows how gullible you are.
Iran denied they shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, killing 176 civilians; do you believe them? Are you that gullible?
Iran denied launching missiles toward Diego Garcia, calling it an Israeli false flag attack; do you believe them?
Iran's denied its drones strikes on Omani ports, then a day later Iran's FM admitted it and apologized, then the next day Iran fired another volley of drones at Oman. Iran has given up pretending, and they now openly place mines in Omani waters.
Furthermore, your "false flag theory" is flawed. For your "false flag theory" to work, Israel not only launched the drones undetected, but Azerbaijan's own government is either complicit in the lie or they were duped. That's an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence. Yet you provide zero evidence that Azerbaijan is lying, and zero evidence of Israeli involvement.
Azerbaijan's own Ministry of Defense confirmed the strikes by four Iranian drones. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry confirmed a drone hit near a school. Iran denies it because that is their MO, not because it didn't happen.
It's the more interesting case precisely because it was an outlier with no US bases, US assests, et al.
> your own explanation convicts Iran.
Not my explanation, see the linked discussion.
> ... do you believe them? Are you that gullible?
Tell me more about when you stopped beating your wife.
> then the next day Iran fired another volley of drones at Oman.
I believe I looked into Azerbaijan which may have been hit by an independent IRG cell, IIRC Oman is an entire other country.
> Furthermore, your "false flag theory" is flawed.
Not my theory - see the linked discussion.
Yes, yes.
Like it was left to itself in the 50s and 70s.
Cool story bro.
> That policy will lead to world peace, since there will be no world left to live in.
You know what does not lead to world peace? A situation where the US believes it has free pass to bomb other countries and interfere on them unchecked.
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Iraq, Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Cyprus
completely unprompted, this year. Each of these countries had peaceful relations with Iran, prior to Iran attacking them. Oman was negotiating on Iran's side to resolve the conflict with Israel, yet Iran bombed them anyway. Azerbaijan has no ties to the Israel/US/Iran conflict. Yet Iran shot attack drones at a school in Azerbaijan anyway.
Should such a country be trusted with nuclear weapons?
It has been attacked prior to that.
You keep pretending Iran is the agressor here.
It is actually defending itself, attacking countries in its vicinity that harbor US forces.
> completely unprompted, this year
US bombed Iran amidst negotiations, before Iran attacked those countries.
You have a very interesting notion of what "unprompted" means.
> Should such a country be trusted with nuclear weapons?
Are you talking about the US?
I certainly don't think it can be trusted with any weapons.
> It is actually defending itself, attacking countries in its vicinity that harbor US forces.
Azerbaijan has no US military bases, it has no Israeli military bases, it has no ties to the current conflict, yet Iran still fired drones at a school in Azerbaijan, completely unprompted.
Oman was negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and Iran, it was actively advocating on the side Iran for a peace deal, Oman tried their hardest to remain neutral towards Iran in this conflict, yet Iran betrayed them and still fired drones at ports in Oman in the opening days of the war.
Iran has attacked all of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, Iraq, Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Cyprus just this year.
Iran's actions betray each of your claims.
Iran makes poor foreign policy decisions. Iran made the conscious choice to attack these countries. Iran chooses a hostile foreign policy toward its neighbors. None of these countries want conflict with Iran, all of them want peace, yet Iran attacks them anyway.
You don't seem to know about the wars Russia fought even in the last 30 years, and the ways they did.
Maybe don’t have the buffoon who thinks he knows everything drive those kind of decisions
It’s much more factual and useful to point out that Trump is remarkably easily influenced and Netanyahu was able to remarkably easily influence him.