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Judge the current US policy by the current US.
Then it is obvious we need to preemptively nuke the USA right now.
There are roughly 12 million Americans over the age of 80.
I guess children aren't alive.
Okinawa alone cost 12,000 US soldiers. With 100,000 to 150,000 civilian deaths.
Iran has repeatedly called for "death to America," "death to Israel" and so on.
Israel's leaders do not generally call for the destruction of other countries.
It's hard to predict what a theocracy might do.
Moreover, the point is that Israel is the country least likely to use nuclear weapons against the US, not that Canada is especially likely to.
Up until fairly recently, Israel was a stand-out in the region for actually having things like decently fair elections and a political class derived from a relatively wide sample of its populace. Other countries in the region were either Arab nationalist republics, Islamic republics, or authoritarian monarchies. While it was ethno-theocratic, it was one that seemed to balance religion with secular demands, and as it is, most countries around the world have at least some basis in ethnicity. The US is a notable exception for this, for what it's worth. This has begun to fade as a more conservative sector of Israeli society has begun carrying more political power, but it's not to the same extent as you find in other countries in the region.
Nuclear weapons are indeed bad and we used to try to negotiate ways between major powers to reduce their number. We don't do that anymore, for a variety of reasons. The more of them there are in different, independent hands, the more likely they are to be used. If they're used, there's a real chance that nuclear-armed powers make severe miscalculations about who is firing what at where. For example, a USAF radar operator watching an over-the-horizon system pointed eastward sees a large number of missiles being launched, and may assume that they're Russian missiles aimed at the US, when they are in fact Iranian missiles aimed at Israel. They might make a potentially species-ending mistake as a result.
The largest issue with Iran having nuclear weapons is that it almost certainly intends to use them against an already nuclear-armed power, Israel, in a way that really doesn't have any rational endgame. Iran is a Shia Islamic theocracy. Beyond the Western-ish influence that Israel brings to the region, there are serious theological implications from the existence of Israel. Islam has a core tenant that there is no higher power other than Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet. Allah is the same god that exists in Christianity and Judaism, and Muhammad is held as carrying on the thread of prophecy that began with the biblical Adam.
There's a lot in common in the three major Abrahamic faiths, and like all other faiths, people interpret it in different ways. The Iranian regime - who definitely does not represent all Muslims, let's make that clear right now - interprets it as the basis of their power. They are a group of clerics and scholars who govern a nation through interpretation and application of religious jurisprudence via one head cleric, the Ayatollah.
If you are a person who either rules a society based on any religious jurisprudence, or are working under that person - as all of the Iranian government does - you can't have too much tolerance for things that might undermine that religion. The Iranian theocracy's interpretation of the line of prophecy that Muhammad is a part of is that he is the "seal of the prophets", meaning that there will be no further revelations or corrections to the line of prophecy until the end-times. Muhammad is held up as having revealed corrections to the line of prophecy, meaning that while Judaism, Christianity, and other Abrahamic faiths are of the same prophecy, they ultimately got some things wrong.
Now let's get back to the existence of Israel. A short description of Israel in the context of what I've described is that you have a people who now control some of the Abrahamic faiths' most holy sites, and they're doing it based off of what is seen as the "wrong" prophecy.
If people who believe in the "wrong" prophecy are firmly in charge of the sites you consider holy, what does that say about your prophecy and your claim to power based on it? Sort of reduces its power, doesn't it? You can't have that. Something has to be done.
In the eyes of the Iranian theocracy, that "something" is funding, training, and commanding militia and military groups who are sympathetic to your understanding of prophecy and having them strike out at the theologically inconvenient people. Developing more powerful weapons to use while doing so is a natural part of this. What's more powerful than a nuclear weapon? Nothing. So you make that your ultimate goal. What they might do with it, who knows, but again, simply having more nuclear weapons in the hands of more independent actors raises the likelihood of their use with potentially catastrophic results.
The plight of the Palestinians just happens to be a convenient excuse for all of this. They're Arab and majority Sunni as opposed to the Persian and Shiite Iran. If there were a two-state solution as we spent most of the last 30 years working towards, it likely wouldn't satisfy the Iranians, which is why they don't recognize Israel at all instead of saying "we'd recognize you if you retreat to your pre-1967 borders and let the Palestinian Authority govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip."
The extent is.
That being said, if you're talking about the 1953 coup, ask the British about that. Also, it doesn't take away from the fact that the 1979 revolution didn't install any sort of representative government, either.
At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it. Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state.
Maybe we should have brokered some kind of deal with Russia to prevent them from invading Ukraine. Do you trust American intelligence 100% to verify Iran is not building a nuclear bomb? And if they weren't, why also were they funding these militant groups? What's the point? It's Neo-colonialism in the Middle East.
> At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it.
The leadership wasn't really rational in your western sense. I'm not sure where you are coming up with that. If they were rational they wouldn't be murdering their own civilians, chanting death to Israel and death to America as a national past time (no sane nation does this, or if you want to argue they do then don't get mad when Americans are burning the Koran or whatever) and funding militants. You're trying to argue from a place that assumes your values about economics and prosperity and global human rights with an entity that does not care about those values.
If they were rational as you'd like them to be they'd just not do any of the things they've been doing. Why does Iran have to get special treatment to not build a nuclear weapon? Have you thought about that? Why do we have to pay them off? Why are they special snowflakes who get to hold the world hostage less they build nuclear bombs to threaten others?
> Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state.
That's the fault of the rest of the world then for failing to come together to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The point is we had a deal, and Iran kept their enrichment below weapons development levels for all of that time. Even a few years after the deal was broken by Trump, apparently. We could have kept that status quo going and not dealt with tolls in the strait and expensive military operations, and it would have been better for everyone involved. But now I don't see a path back to that, and no one is interested enough to stop the proliferation or put enough resources into it to "win". Blame whoever you like I guess, but I'm blaming Trump for tearing things up and kicking off this recent war.
> We could have kept that status quo going
Like the last time the Houthis disrupted shipping? Or when Iran launched and supported attacks on Israel, plus continued disruption in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq? (Yemen too but mentioned via Houthis). Idk if that's a tolerable situation.
Good luck with non proliferation but I think the very obvious "we can attack and invade countries without nukes but can't do that to countries with nukes" lesson is being demonstrated to everyone, so countries that don't want to be invaded will be trying to get them now. Anyone near Russia for sure, possibly even Switzerland eventually.
Hey I mean this is your problem too, wherever you are from. You seem a little nonchalant about nuclear proliferation which most consider to be a rather serious matter because of the potential for real nuclear war or nuclear attacks.
If you've got a good way to stop people from wanting nuclear power and weapons you can try it, and sincerely good luck to you. It would be nice. I don't think you can stop Iran though.
Obama was my favorite president and I think his efforts to stop Iran were great, but at the end of the day the agreement was never going to work because in order for it to work you require circumstances which defeat the purpose of the agreement in the first place, which is that Iran would not have an interest (like most countries) in pursuing a nuclear weapon.
To your point about stopping other countries. Well unfortunately nobody in the world except the United States seems to have any interest, and since they are unable to step up and be responsible we'll either have to bomb other countries who try to build nuclear weapons or we'll have to let those weapons spread and hope we don't see nuclear bombs being used. It's really awful. The EU, Russia, and China are the ones who bare the lion's share of the blame if that were to occur. China and Russia for turning a blind eye or outright supporting other countries obtaining the weapons, the EU for not supporting the United States when it seeks to stop the spread.
I understand history and contemporary events is not your strong suit, but such a deal was very much on the table in December 2021 and the Biden Admin laughed it off. Then again in April 2022.
I'd check your understanding but ok.
> but such a deal was very much on the table in December 2021 and the Biden Admin laughed it off.
What was the deal then? And please let us know how acceptable it was to the EU and Ukraine as well. :)
It's also clear that Iran having nukes would be a strategic deterrent to Israel's ultraviolent territorial expansionism.
I'm not supportive of Israel having nuclear weapons, but Iran won't do something like this because the Israelis might nuke them. That doesn't excuse Iran also building nuclear weapons. Neither should have them, in my view.
Iran also supports the militants that continue to create conflict in Palestine. It's not one-sided and any vague assertion that there's only one bad actor here is illegitimate.
Chemical weapons are perfectly effective for that desire and dramatically easier to build and deploy than nuclear weapons.
So if you expect Iran to just explode Israel ASAP, why are they holding back right now with their weapons not targeting civilian infrastructure? Why did they stop pursuing cheap WMDs that don't need complicated enrichment?
Note that Iran is objectively not pursuing a nuke as fast as possible. They've had sufficient enriched uranium for a long time to be able to actually start building and testing physics packages and even get their first detonation test, but they instead have just been building a stockpile.
>I'm not supportive of Israel having nuclear weapons
Okay, then by your arguments about Iran, we should be invading Israel right? Like right now! They cannot be allowed to have nukes!
What about North Korea? It sure is funny how all the hand wringing about them getting nuclear weapons got quiet after they built a nuke and didn't use it
This is immature. If you wanted to use that logic we should invade Russia and China too, and of course the UK and France. Let me cut to the core of the issue here and prune away the window dressing: not all countries are treated the same, nor do they deserve to be.
> What about North Korea? It sure is funny how all the hand wringing about them getting nuclear weapons got quiet after they built a nuke and didn't use it
You don't think it's still worth hand-wringing about? Just because it's not #1 on the news cycle - quick look a Trump tweet - doesn't mean it's not a big problem. Tell it to the Japanese in particular who have to suffer from North Korea launching ballistic missiles around their country.
You've said elsewhere in this thread that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and that a global oil crisis is worth preventing that from happening. You've referred to the Iranian government as a "deranged death cult". Here you're saying that even though Iran already has the capability of making Israel uninhabitable, they won't do it because they're rational actors who understand mutually assured destruction. Which one is it? Assuming your premise in this comment of the Iranians being rational actors who understand MAD is correct, could there be other reasons for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons (i.e. sovereignty and national security)?
It's both. The Iranians are rational within their own cultural understanding of what rational actions are. It's not rational, for example, for them to build nuclear weapons, deprive their people of economic prosperity, kill thousands of protestors, fund militant groups spreading terrorism and murder throughout the region, yet they do it anyway.
You can be simultaneously "rational" in some ways and "irrational" in others. Their general activities are irrational, but that doesn't mean they see the point in launching indiscriminate missiles at Israel only to be on the receiving end of a nuclear weapon. Why not wait until you have dozens and then go for it and launch one at Europe (don't forget, despite European politicians kissing the toes of Iran out of fear and cultural decline that Iran still hates Europe too) or the US too?
> could there be other reasons for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons (i.e. sovereignty and national security)?
Why do you assume the other reasons are for peaceful purposes? Can you think of some malicious purposes that Iran might acquire a nuclear weapon for?
Iran's behavior (not its rhetoric) is largely pragmatic in the sense of pursuing national and regime security. For example, its strategy of funding military groups allows it to project power across the Middle East relatively cheaply, and meant that for decades most Iran-US and Iran-Israel fighting happened outside Iran. Of course, after the October 7 attacks the network lost much of its deterrent value once Israel decided that escalation was worth the costs the militant groups could impose, and began direct attacks on Iran. Still, it worked well for the prolonged gray-area conflict it was designed for.
Similarly, if Iran got a nuclear weapon, it wouldn't achieve much beyond self-defense. Iran wouldn't be able to blackmail or coerce its neighbors for the same reason that North Korea isn't able to extract concessions from the West, or that Israel isn't able to push around its neighbors. Nuclear weapons are not useful tools of coercion. If they were, maybe Israel's status as a nuclear power would have dissuaded Iran from pursuing nuclear enrichment. Any state that used a nuclear weapon would have the whole world turn against it and risk nuclear retaliation. Both Iran and its neighbors know this, so any hypothetical nuclear threats would not seem credible.
This explains Iran's historical strategy of being a "threshold" nuclear state- possessing the expertise and capability to build a nuclear weapon without suffering the political consequences of actually building one. However, the US-Israeli attacks on Iran in 2025 and 2026 (including assassinating the head of state and his family) may lead the Iranian leadership to conclude that having a threshold capability is insufficient and that the country needs an actual nuclear deterrent to protect its sovereignty in the future.
My point (and I apologize if it wasn’t clear enough) was that westerners approach Iran from our own concept of rational behavior: democracy, human rights, free trade (over simplifying but bear with me).
If Iran were acting rational according to our principles we wouldn’t be here. But they’re not. Trying to negotiate with them based on “rationality” doesn’t make sense because the views on rational behavior are generally incompatible. It’s the same to a large extent with Putin. Why give up huge economic advantages and prosperity and all of those things and become a truly European company just to invade Ukraine? The behavior according to our views isn’t rational but to Putin (and those who support) it’s quite rational.
its not clear at all. They clearly tried to hit Izrael with barrages of missiles, but looks like their targeting systems suck.
There's a reason why Israel has stopped directly striking Iran.
its inefficient at this point and Israel has other targets