The helicopter in question was flying in Oman, in Omani territorial waters.
Why does Iran have the right to fire drones into other countries?
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?
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.
No, that's outdated.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.
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 No, that's outdated.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...
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.