Do you think in the current situation they are more or less likely to try for a nuke than before?
So apparently, we've yet to do anything to prevent them from doing it.
We've just killed children.
They killed more than 30,000 of their own people including children and support terrorist regimes in multiple countries that also kill children.
> There's zero evidence its less possible
On the other hand we bombed the nuclear facilities so what increase in nuclear weapons capability do they have that you are thinking about here? If there's something that has changed I'd be curious to read about it or your thoughts since that would change my opinion.
The evidence we bombed their nuclear facilities is essentially this administration telling us we bombed their nuclear facilities.
This administration does not have a track record of providing the public with honest assessments of their success.
If we've successfully stopped them from developing a nuclear weapon, which was stated as the point of our preemptive aggression, I'd need a very good reason why we continue to spend billions attacking them.
No my take is we do it by accident and they do it on purpose and at a much larger scale and instead of pearl clutching about the US doing it on accident you should be pearl clutching about Iran doing it. I didn’t bring it up, but anytime someone brings up this whole “US killed kids” I’m happy to remind everyone that Iran is far worse.
> The evidence we bombed their nuclear facilities is essentially this administration telling us we bombed their nuclear facilities.
So? Do you not believe anything anyone says unless you see it for yourself?
> If we've successfully stopped them from developing a nuclear weapon, which was stated as the point of our preemptive aggression, I'd need a very good reason why we continue to spend billions attacking them.
Stopping the development of a nuclear weapon is an important goal but not the only one. We keep defending ourselves because they keep doing things like launching rockets at Kuwait, or shooting at American ships, or supporting those committing genocide or murder in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Yemen.
There is a very simple solution. Iran stops funding these groups, stops murdering their own people, stop launching rockets, and stops trying to build nuclear weapons. Once they do that and behave responsibility like just about every other country on the planet there aren’t any problems.
Why is it that they can’t just stop doing these things?
"Hey, we're not as bad a literal terrorist regime!" is not a metric by which I think we should measure our own country.
I'd believe we'd actually accomplished our goal of stopping their nuclear program if this specific administration hadn't told us, before this attack, we had successfully stopped their nuclear program with a previous attack. Once you've lied to me once, my standard of evidence is a great deal higher than "trust us, bro." and this administration has already shown incompetence at judging the effectiveness of their attacks (or shown a willingness to lie to us about it).
The entire problem with this strategy, from day one, was the completely ahistorical belief that we could punish a country into behaving exactly as we want, in a way that specifically aligns with our interests.
Bullying nations has a tendency to harden them against cooperation and negotiation, as we've seen with Iran.
Ok and they did theirs with malicious and clear purpose. Yikes!
> This wasn't the unfortunate result of a necessary attack on a valid target. This was the result of stupidity.
No. Iran and their militant proxies know that we don't attack civilian targets on purpose. That's why they set up facilities, military equipment, or hide combatants behind children or in hospitals and such because they know we don't want to kill innocent people. Hamas or Iran will tell you this as part of their doctrine.
So think about it. You've got the US and allies, Hamas, Hezbollah or whatever, Iran, and they're all saying "The US and western allies don't intentionally kill innocent people" and then there's you who is like sitting here complaining about it and now it's just "incompetence". Give me a break.
> "Hey, we're not as bad a literal terrorist regime!" is not a metric by which I think we should measure our own country.
Nobody is using that metric except you. The US admitted the mistake and apologized at a minimum. I believe there was some talk of compensation though I'm not sure where that has landed. Probably tough to do because the Iranian regime would steal any money we gave to the families.
But hey I do agree with you, Iran's government is a terrorist regime.
> Bullying nations has a tendency to harden them against cooperation and negotiation, as we've seen with Iran.
Well sure but they were never cooperating anyway. If they were, they wouldn't have been taking the actions they've been taking. What does cooperation look like? It looks like not murdering tens of thousands of your own people, it looks like not pursuing nuclear weapons, it looks like not funding militant groups who murder innocent people throughout the region, and it looks like not building up gigantic stockpiles of missiles and drones and then launching them at every country around you.
Iran is the only country doing this stuff. Why aren't they cooperating with the rest of the world peacefully?
This has been heavily reported on and no counter-story has been proffered.
You introduced a whataboutalism. I pointed out whataboutalisms are ridiculous when it comes to dead children.
The frustrating part of all of this is we had a working agreement with Iran, with numerous mechanisms to ensure compliance, that was torn up because this administration, without any offered evidence, said Iran wasn't in compliance. And this was despite multiple international partners disagreeing and saying they were absolutely complying.
Sure, but you should be talking Iran killing people since they killed many more and did so on purpose instead of on accident. You keep using the term incompetence because you have an axe to grind. Actions matter but intentions get a say too.
> You introduced a whataboutalism.
Well I'm certainly not going to, where I see it happen, let people just dance around talking about US "incompetence" and ignoring Iranian purposeful murder as they try to denigrate my country for their own political aims. These people shouldn't be your political football and you should be more focused on Iranian action.
> The frustrating part of all of this is we had a working agreement with Iran
Why do they need a special snowflake agreement else they build nuclear weapons? Weren't they signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty? Should other countries start building nuclear weapons so they can get some sort of concession from the United States? Why does the US have to give these concessions and not the entire world since it's in everyone's interest that we don't have every country on the planet building nuclear fucking bombs and maybe using them? Did we forget we don't want that or something?
I have no control of, or say, in how Iran operates.
I am a US Citizen who votes in the US and who is concerned with the actions my government takes on my behalf.
If Iran shouldn't "need an agreement" not to build nuclear weapons, what exactly is our current aggression seeking to accomplish? How does it end? How do we know its over?
When there is no longer a single person in Iran?
I didn't say you did. I'm just focused on their wrongdoings and I'm not interested in some accident that the US was involved in. We accidentally blew something up? Dang that sucks. Let's talk about how awful Iran is instead and focus on that because that's what matters.
> I have no control of, or say, in how Iran operates.
What does that matter? You also have no control or say of how Israel operates. Therefore you can't criticize them or be concerned with their actions? You also have no say in Ukraine or Russia.
> If Iran shouldn't "need an agreement" not to build nuclear weapons, what exactly is our current aggression seeking to accomplish?
Sorry I'm not following. They shouldn't need an agreement to behave like the rest of the signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, yet they want an agreement special treatment, and still develop nuclear weapons in secret. Partly what our defensive operations are seeking to accomplish is to stop them from building nuclear weapons because... they're trying to build them, aren't honoring the NNPT, are murdering their own people, and murdering other people throughout the Middle East. Like why are you so confused about this? Are you unaware of these activities or something?
How about this, can you walk me through what your understanding of Iranian funded militias in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon is? Just at a high level how do you understand those various situations?
> How does it end? How do we know it's over?
Who knows?
> When there is no longer a single person in Iran?
No that doesn't make any sense.
Our military murdered 170 children due to incompetence.
I am aware of Iran's activities. Everyone is. The regime is murderous, and hostile to our allies in the region.
And absolutely nothing we are doing, right now, has changed or will change that.
You’re calling it incompetence because you have an axe to grind. The US military simply does not intentionally murder children. Everybody knows that including Iran! That’s why these guys put their military equipment next to civilian infrastructure. Why is that I’m telling you this, the military tells you this, European militaries would tell you this, Iran tells you this, and yet you alone are insistent that it is incompetence and not an accident?
> I am aware of Iran's activities. Everyone is. The regime is murderous, and hostile to our allies in the region.
Good let’s focus the conversation there since that’s what is important.
> And absolutely nothing we are doing, right now, has changed or will change that.
False
You sound gleeful about the idea of nuclear proliferation. It's unfortunate that so many have stopped caring about the institutions and liberal world order we created. Oh well.
If/once Iran gets one we'll give one to Saudi Arabia at least and make sure Israel's program is well supported. Then we can make sure Germany has them and Poland too if they want them. Korea and Japan will also get the green light. Anyone who opposes China/Russia will can get access to then and we can add a dozen or so countries to the nuclear armed states list. Why not?
Re: nuclear weapons. If the US gives up the role of protecting other friendly nations and NATO isn't viewed as reliable anymore, it makes sense to develop nuclear weapons. As a German I am starting to wonder if we should develop our own just in case Putin gets some ideas. And I am sure Japan and South Korea are having similar thoughts.
Part of that preservation means a safe and stable Middle East and more countries not acquiring nuclear weapons.
You simply cannot “negotiate” with Iran here. It’s no different than when Europeans (rightfully in my view) say there’s no negotiating with Putin and then go and complain about the US sending delegates to Russia trying to figure something out no matter how half-brained the Trump administration might be.
Likely not any more, not since Trump tore up US participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
One bad faith act destroyed concerted effort by multiple countries that would have seen greater Iranian integration into the world and the falling off of internal extreme influence.
Negotiation demonstrably worked, in the past, trust was destroyed .. who did that?
Are those the actions of a country that is really following the JCPOA? This is what a "negotiation" got us. The fact that Trump tore up the JCPOA isn't relevant because they shouldn't need to have an agreement to not build nuclear weapons in the first place! Is Vietnam or Brazil funding militias and loading up on military hardware and threatening to build a nuclear weapon unless they get some sort of special agreement to not do it?
It wasn't "one bad faith act" there never needed to be an act in the first place and you're ignoring all of Iran's actions that themselves were bad faith!
doing things that weren't covered by the JCPOA.
So, this doesn't negate the demonstrable point that negotiation with Iran actually works .. at least until one party breaks the agreement.
> Are those the actions of a country that is really following the JCPOA?
How many parties to JCPOA were also manufacturing and supplying arms? Certainly China, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S were.
Were Germany and France also doing the same?
> all of Iran's actions that themselves were bad faith!
Yeah .. nah. (See above).