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