What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all.
I suspect that after their nuclear program was discovered and set back they fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy and convinced themselves they could repurpose it as leverage. But they are a theocratic regime and their messaging (whether genuine or not) made that a non-viable option in reality.
This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you? Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first if you can't destroy their capability by other means. What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
I feel very conflicted about what's happening.
On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked.
> What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.
That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
This is the key. People talk some crazy stories about Iran being a theocratic state whose life mission is destroying Israel but the fact is they don't want to end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat.
And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US. So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not.
Syria was embroiled and toppled by Islamic Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham backed by Turkey. Libya was due to civil war. Several of these conflicts were funded by Iran as well.
You can go down the list. Please study at least some basics on the region.
> So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.
One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Theocracies can be unpredictable. Also they could provide dirty bombs to their proxies in the region.
- Libya was bombed primarily by France and then other NATO countries for no good reason. And from a functioning dictatorship it is a failed state.
- Syria was invaded by Turkey/US right after the civil war started.
In the world we all live in you need to have powerful deterrents so that the US/France/UK/NATO will not dare to bomb you for whatever reason they feel "justified" to do.
In an extreme, I think every country should have a lot of nukes so other countries can mind their own business.
The comment didn't suggest that exactly.
> One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation?
Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership. They've probably figured out retaliation is a possibility here - if this is Israel's defence when they aren't even being threatened, imagine what they will do in their defence when the Iranians actually do something directly! Even if the Iranians are legitimately stupid at some level the campaign of missile strikes must have registered that they are vulnerable to missiles.
Allah or Jahwe, what's the difference. Both countries are some kind of theocracies, that see infidels as inferior. If Israel has nukes, so should Iran. At least Iran is Shia, so different from the most Muslims, which are Sunni.
https://www.bu.edu/history/files/2015/04/Khalaji-Apocalyptic...
Mutual destruction makes sense when you're a death cult and the enemy is evil. Iran nuking Israel knowing full well they will get nuked back IS rational if your belief is that Allah will reward you for it in the afterlife and they do sincerly believe that.
You should read books published by reformed Islamists. Radical by Maajid Nawaz is a good one.
They profess to believe (and they are sincere) that they will be rewarded for dying killing Israelis. There's a reason that if I tell you a story about a suicide bomber blowing up a public square in political protest you do not have to wonder what religion they are. It's not because all Muslims are insane, they aren't, it's because some of them have beliefs that make that action rational.
(For example, see how Hamas will not surrender even when offered free passage out of Gaza. They'd rather Israel grind their way through the Palestinian population bomb by bomb because they think every Palestinian killed goes to heaven. If they were rational as we understand the world, they'd realize their plight is hopeless and the only thing they ensure by staying is civillian deaths.)
Yup.
Hamas will fight to the last Palestinian. They could have ended the Gaza war a year ago (or more). All they have to say is: "Here are the hostages. Here are our weapons. We are now shoemakers."
Why don't they do this?
Because they would rather fight to the last Palestinian child.
Hamas has agency. They could end war any time since October 8, 2023.
100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid. The "existential threat" bs being peddled by a certain government is simply to give cover to illegal attacks on a sovereign nation. This is "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.
Believe people when they tell you what they are going to do. Even if Iran wouldn’t use it if they had it, threatening to use it shifts the probability for them using it.
Khomeini isn’t on Kim jong un’s level
I'm not sure how can you say that, now that they are dead, completely due to how they positioned themselves on the regional and global landscape.
In Iran's case this is further compounded by their consistent anti Israeli PR and anti-Israeli militias funding.
Who has "legal" WMDs - the P5? Israel is a non-signatory to NPT, meaning their WMDs are as legal as anyone else's.
By what means are the israeli nukes (I assume thats whats meant by WMDs?) illegal? They didn't sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and I don't think spying and stealing is illegal between countries under international law.
is it crazy, sure. is it crazy story to say,no. it seems real.
A pretty popular opinion these days
why would not iran gov sacrifice few million of its people to kill whole israel?
Hell, in the next 30 or so years oil will disappear from the middle east, and Iran is just about the only country that has a realistic shot at still having an economy after that.
some religious lunatics would deem that worthy
I think the point of this bombing is to change the calculus you just mentioned. Now there’s an actual reason to not try for nukes, you may get bombed.
NK’s conventional weapons (and SK’s pointed right back at them) saved them from conflict, that’s how they got to nukes without us doing something like this. They already had mutually assured destruction from conventional weapons and proximity to an ally.
Iran’s problem is we don’t care much about anyone around them except Israel, and they already would destroy Israel if they could, so they had nobody’s head at which to aim their bullet.
NK’s government is an evil one but the Kims really like being alive and that keeps them somewhat rational. They are quite obviously not religious since they claim to be God (and surely are aware they are not), so they don’t believe in benefits to martyrdom.
Islamism is a death cult (and I mean that literally) so their actions aren’t rational as we would define the word. We can’t rely on their self-preservation instinct the way we can with the Kims.
Germany in that case will then briefly technically have nukes, but no ability to knowledge of how to launch or control them. Had Ukraine tried to hold onto those nukes and/or figure out how to launch them they would likely have been invaded by just about every country in the world, including the US, so they gave them up for a few bucks and some kind words.
And I strongly disagree about Iran. Pakistan is also an Islamic country (with its proper name being the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) and a nuclear power, and they haven't just decided to go nuke India who they have abysmal relations with. Religion does provide a different level of comfort with death (and Iran has a longgggggg history of enduring pain to expel invaders on top), but it does not just turn people into death cult members.
There's some irony in that if Iran had nuclear weapons their relations with Israel would likely have been much better. Because Israel wouldn't have been constantly attacking, assassinating, and otherwise doing everything they could to undermine the country. It's similar to how if North Korea didn't have nukes then South Korea, largely as a proxy of the US, would likely have been actively attacking them.
South Korea was never going to attack North Korea because, as I mentioned, they had plenty of conventional weapons they could easily deliver to South Korea. They had mutually assured destruction before they even tried to get nukes, that's why they succeeded. Iran does not have that yet, and must be stopped before they do.
I do now know whether this was the right way to do it by any means, and I think it's a shame that the Obama-era deal was abandoned. I think we could possibly have gotten here through peaceful measures. But we did need to get to here.
It's not that simple. Those countries were destined towards collapse with or without nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Syria—those are three countries that fell into catastrophic civil wars, along internal conflict lines, in power vacuums succeeding an unpopular dictator. None of those autocracies were stable in the long-term. (But a nuclear weapon is quite stable; it succeeds the falls of governments and passes on to whoever replaces them).
Deplore US' strategic stupidities all you want; but it's not the only actor with agency in the world.
Would anyone have been better off with Assad fighting a version of the 2010's civil war with nuclear weapons in his arsenal? Or Hussein, that sectarian war? Those are two men who gassed thousands of innocents with nerve agents; they wouldn't surely wouldn't hesitate long about dropping nukes.
(Can you deter a civil war with nuclear weapons?)
We could also ask who would have inherited a hypothetical Qaddafi nuke, after his fall: which Libya? There were at least three Libyas one point. ISIL governed one!
(One semantic nitpick: I don't think it's fair to say those dictators "gave up" their WMD's. With all three, their WMD programs were forcibly taken from them. In Iraq, 1981, the bombing of the Osirak reactor; and again in the 1991 Gulf War the bombing of Tuwaitha (which permanently ended Iraq's uranium enrichment). Qaddafi turned over all his nuclear materials to the USA, after being directly threatened, in the months following US' 2003 invasion of Iraq. And Assad lost his North Korean-built plutonium reactor in 2007, to an airstrike. Did anyone of these dictators have agency in those "give up WMD" choices? I think not).
For Libya and Syria, sure, but what are you talking about for Iraq? Saddam was unambiguously ousted from an internally secure position of power by a foreign invasion that followed in the wake of over a decade of heavy sanctions and no-fly zone imposure. By many accounts, Saddam had a strong base of support within his population and his rule was stable (backed by a blend of patronage and severe terror obviously) right up until the day he was ousted by vastly superior military might from outside.
While it's extremely hard to know what would have happened to his regime had he still been in power by the time of the Arab Spring and the events that caused the ouster of Gaddafi and eventually Assad, Saddam would surely have been able to stay in power at least up to then. I certainly don't imagine him having more difficulty handling an internal strife of the kind that ruined Assad's dictatorship. Except for his catastrophic miscalculation of making a long-term enemy of the US during the first, utterly pointless Gulf War, he at least showed himself to be the far more experienced and careful dictator during his rule.
Once you've obtained some nukes, complete with decent rockets to liv them, nobody is going to mess with you too badly, or try to take the nukes back; you're now a member if the club.
Japan or South Korea would likely be able to produce nuclear weapons in a few months if they needed to. I bet even Ukraine could, with its remaining nuclear plants and relatively advanced industry, and are on friendly terms with the US.
But if you made enemies with the big members of the nuclear club, and with the US in particular, they will do everything to stop you, and your situation would become much harder; that's the case with Iran.
This sounds ridiculous.
Even basic logic - Ukraine had the technical know-how to do whatever they wanted with the nukes. Moscow didn't have control, at best on paper - if they had control, there was no need for the Budapest Memorandum.
I keep debunking this propaganda point over and over again lol
You have to process massive piles of mass into a very small fraction. And you have to collect all those rocks. And that’s just for fission.
As long as any country with preemptive strike capability exists, and satellites exist… I just don’t see how anyone could do it.
And you know this how? Accordingly to all those initial predictions Russia should be already disintegrated and fallen under heavy sanctions, Putin's regime replaced etc. etc. I suspect all these analytics and think tanks should be cleaning toilets instead.
Also there is a line in that backing crossing which may lead to an all out nuclear war. Rational countries that matter understandably do not want to test it unless their existence is really threatened.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/north-koreas-artill...
Iran’s deterrent was/is through its proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis) along with its sizable missile inventory, anti-air capabilities and strategic threats to oil and gas exports.
Israel’s investment in missile defense and the outcome of the Oct 7th attacks severely weakened Iran’s deterrence to a conventional attack.
I think the lesson should be that any nation that has enough conventional leverage to deter an attack could choose to build nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons may complement, but can’t displace other capabilities.
The US has nuclear weapons but that didn’t deter Iran from launching direct attacks on US troops in the Middle East or sponsoring insurgents in Iraq. Nuclear weapons are also essential worthless against non nation-state actors such as Al-Qaeda.
If South Korea’s coalition could establish air superiority over the DMZ and artillery range in the first moves, I think it takes you from “Seoul destroyed” to a “pretty average modern conflict.”
Hot take for sure, but war has changed.
That sounds insane. I don't think world would be more peaceful if every country under every government had WMDs. We'd be in the middle of nuclear winter now if that was the case. You could draw analogies to everyone owning a gun. We know it just ends up with many more dead and nothing being more peaceful.
> Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict.
He's wrong. What protects North Korea is that it's poor, has no natural resources and devastated human capital and neither attacks anyone with terrorist attacks nor credibly prophesies their intent to kill any nation or ethnicity.
If they did that, they'd be steamrolled already. WMDs or not.
Or had them, and then gave them up because they were under the impression that they would be protected if they did so; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de...
So, I have an honest (non rhetorical) question: Was NK saved more by having their own nukes, or by sharing a land border with China who has nukes and doesn't want the US getting involved in the area?
Nuclear weapons can target, the US based on the region, sure. But NK does not need nukes to reduce the south Korean capital to rubble.
That's ahistorical in the case of Syria and Iraq. Israel destroyed the nascent nuclear weapons programmes of Syria and Iraq, just as it has done to Iran's. Syria and Iraq did not give up those programmes willingly.
By your logic, I am a little surprised Iran is still even a state then.
I never understood the logic.. (or maybe it's the theatric element?) There are other WMD that seem much simpler. If they hypothetically release some horrible biological agent in Israel - it could incapacitate the country overnight
Or set off a dirty bomb to make huge regions unlivable (just the perception of radiation risk would preclude many from living there.. see Fukushima)
How has the situation been better in the twenty years NK has had nuclear weapons than the fifty years after the Korean war and before NK got nukes?
No you don't, unless you're a dictatorship (including all the examples you gave).
The point is that you don‘t get attacked by anyone else unless you‘re a dictatorship.
Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice.
Why not? Smart people can make decisions that look weird from the outside.
The foreign policy of the US been looking weird for decades to most outside parties, yet I'm sure there are smart people involved in it on a daily basis. But even with smart people involved, the US been invading countries based on false premises more than once, not sure why it would need to be different for Iran or any other country.
And yet Iranian proxies have repeatedly challenged these powers across the Middle East, in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Sinai, etc. And a lot of Iran's actions have broad support in many other Middle Eastern countries, including strong US allies, those where there are no natural ethnic, religious or linguistic ties to Iran, and where there is prosperity based on peace and the American world order.
Whatever else the Iranian govt are, they are not foreign policy under-hitters or flawed tacticians blinded by dogmatism.
Imagine if they'd spent the money on education, or developing their economy. They could easily have reconciled with the U.S. if they stopped chanting "Death to America" and done something productive with their time and money. This was the inevitable result of their plans, and easily predictable.
2. There are plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are religious fanatics or just power hungry or want to advance in the IRGC ranks/carrier ladder. Khamene.ai is a Living God and there are many engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who worship this deity
3. There are also lots of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are threatened and forced to work for the IRGC. Just like it was in the Soviet Union under the Communism
We will just forget that von Neumann advocated for nuclear first strike based on game theory.
America also has lots of brilliant people. Then we have Hegseth, Noem and the other fuck.
Was enriched uranium destroyed? I doubt it.
Have they even "obliterated" Fordow site buried 90 m deep inside the mountain? I have serious doubts.
Iran's nuclear program was set back some months if anything.
Iran is a huge country and USA and Israel has been pointing their finger on this exakt spot for weeks.
Either they dug further down or they just transported things away.
Leaving it all there just seems like a really weird thing to do.
This implies a tunnel system, or was this transport done in plain sight?
I don't know if you noticed, but what you are arguing for is in fact for mindlessly accepting unverified claims and extrapolate them to an optimal outcome. This is the opposite of critical thinking, and goes well beyond wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, if you pay attention to OP's point, you'll understand that Iran's nuclear sites have been continuously designed and developed for decades, while subjected to an almost evolutionary pressure, to continue operations even after withstanding direct attacks in scenarios matching exactly Trump's attacks.
In the very least, you must assess the effect of those strikes before making any sort of claim.
Another factor which it seems you somehow missed was the fact that Russia, another nuclear-capable totalitarian regime, is nowadays heavily dependent on Iran to conduct it's imperialist agenda. If Russia was negotiating handing over nuclear capabilities to North Korea in exchange for supporting it's war effort, do you believe Russia now has no interest to speed up Iran's nuclear weapons programmes?
This isn't really relevant but I'm only making one comment in this post so I'll say it here: young folks don't remember decades of Iranian state sponsored terrorism and do not understand the context of conflict in the middle east.
This would also be a very convenient way to break the current impasse: Trump can claim victory and brag about US weapons, Iranians can continue their program virtually unscathed, perhaps after bombing some minor evacuated US base for show.
After the dust settles, Iran can withdraw fron NNPT and the next day have Pakistan ship them a bomb. Peace (via MAD) achieved! Maybe we should even give Donald his Nobel prize for that.
I guess means no. However I have no idea what they would say if they did. "Yes we poisoned the whole area for generations to come, success!"
Keep in mind, Israel has full aerial control over Iran and has taken out hundreds of their missile launchers.
We can keep pounding the various nuclear facilities and hinder ant chances of rebuilding, making any effort futile.
Such advanced people, the Chinese are.
CEP with GPS for our most accurate glide bombs is 5 meters. But GPS jamming is cheap and easy and the best precision we get in that case is 30 meters CEP.
GPU-57 gets its power from gravity. Reaching that 60 meter maximum penetration requires dropping the bomb from maximum elevation, but without GPS, that further increases the CEP.
With just 6 bombs, it seems unlikely that they could reliably penetrate. Actual penetration would likely require nuclear penetrators, but those also break the nuclear prohibition and open Pandora's box in places like Ukraine.
A great example of the problem is Yemen. We tried to get the Houthi to stop by dropping bunker busters on their tunnel systems and completely failed. We were forced to reach a ceasefire agreement (one that likely went up in smoke last night).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_m...
also you say nk uses nukes as deterrent, deterrent from whom? if they deterred any, they were fine deterring it for 40+ years without.
In what sense Israel is not a theocracy.
Theocracy is a form of government in which religious leaders rule in the name of a deity, and religious law is the basis for all legal and political decisions.
They will tell you that the theocracy folks were a small minority of the entire resistance and first built a government of unity.
Once in charge they started annihilating all other opposition factions one by one.
OP referred to democratic votes, whereas you talk about "popular uprising". Can you explain in your own words why you believe these are even comparable?
- whose Basic Law 2018 declared it a Jewish supremacist state
- where 50% of the population doesn't have the right to vote, land ownership, or travel on the same roads
- and faces 99% conviction rates in military, not civil, courts
- where parties can be banned directly by government decision if it arbitrarily deems them to be anti-Jewish
The Basic Law which passed with 62 for and 55 against, just states what the constitution of pretty much any European country does. Most European countries are nation states. It's countries like Switzerland, Russia and Belgium which are outliers. (Hopefully, one day, they will be broken up too.)
The fundamental issue is the population of the West Bank, who, outside of Palestinian Authority areas (aka "Area A"), are largely controlled by Israel but cannot vote. Note that 1-2 million West Bank Palestinians live in Area A under the Palestinian Authority.
- Within Israel, there is a Communist Party (which rejects religion and ethnicity) and other parties (including two Arab parties).
- A key problem in Israeli democracy, which it would be helpful if you noted, is that although there are two Arab parties (and majority Jewish parties who welcome Arabs), the Arab population of Israel votes at a low rate. This results in their being under-represented in the Knesset.
- The Basic Law you refer to made zero change to who can have political power.
- The 50% you refer to is neither the right percentage, nor does it take into account areas of great Palestinian autonomy.
- Function of the legal system has never been relevant to who can vote or hold office.
If you want to reflect what is on the ground, I suggest you take in the whole picture.
Interesting that 20% of Israelis do not believe in a deity. 18% are Muslim. In Iran, Jews are 0.03% of the population.
I find this very disingenuous because the person you replied to was talking only about Iran, and stating that Iran is a theocracy in their opinion. They never mentioned anything about Iran, let alone stating that Israel isn't a theocracy.
So asking this question, this way, is quite strange in my opinion.
I think the "Jewish state" refers to how the country serves as the homeland for the jewish people, not how they force a religion upon others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state
Israel's legal definition is "Jewish and Democratic state", which explicitly ensures "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex".
The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish People, in which the State of Israel was established.
(b) The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
(c) The realization of the right to national self- determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.
They are all ethno states.
The very concept "nation-state" is an alignment of "ethnic tribe" with "political borders"
You might want to hit a history book or two.
In this regard, Israel is more normal and places like the U.S. are abnormal. (Once you get outside the U.S....)
Israel started bombing Iran and they returned fire. Is trump asking the largest economic and military power in the region to sit by idle as Israel sends missiles and bombs daily? He won't clarify even when asked directly. I don't think we have any reason to believe his narrative if he can't even explain it himself.
I would also like to add that Trump himself is the one who removed IAEA inspectors from routine inspections of Iran, so occams razor would suggest this ambiguity is by design.
> IAEA inspectors
What are some good reasons for producing >60% HEU?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion
The attraction is that high enrichment permits a smaller reactor and less frequent refuelling. US submarines go over 96% enrichment.
Bunker fuel is in the news. Cheap oil for marine diesel engines is both polluting in the traditional sulfur etc sense and in the modern CO2 global warming sense. There are occasional attempts at wind powered sailing ships, or at least sail assisted ships, to reduce the burning of bunker fuel. Nuclear power for shipping is currently out of fashion, but is a legitimate topic for research.
> This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent
Well now we should all be terrified.
> Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first
You should reflect on the religious elements prominently at play within these belligerent states.
I deplore kakistocracy of any stripe, but it is obvious that dictatorships and dictatorship-curious regimes of any sort are an existential threat.
Why are you swallowing the propaganda you've been spoon-fed?
"Gabbard: Iran is not currently developing nuclear weapons"
https://jewishinsider.com/2025/03/gabbard-iran-is-not-curren...
You're misunderstanding their position and that's why it seems idiotic to you: they stopped working on building nukes back in 2003, after that date all they did was using the ability to get nukes as a negotiation leverage, that's how they got JPCoA in 2015 and since the US unilaterally left it in 2018 and the rest of the Western world failed to keep it working (that would have required courage to anger the US), Iran was seeking to force a new deal by raising the bar a bit: they announced back in 2022 that they'd enrich up to 60% in order to increase their negotiation leverage, but they didn't go past that stage nor did they work on the militarization tech in the meantime, because they weren't aiming to get the bomb at all.
Today strike on Iran nuclear sites endangers millions of American and Israeli lives. It teaches Tehran the same lesson North Korea learned long ago. That only a nuclear deterrent secures a regime survival. To believe Iran will absorb this blow without striking back is not merely naive, it is dangerously delusional.
It is also clear any Iranian nuclear critical assets were moved to alternative secret sites long before the strikes, as satellite photos show: "Satellite images show activity at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility before U.S. air strikes" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/22/satellite-images-show-activi...
Note that I'm not a fan of Israel, condemn their genocide in Gaza, and consider Netanyahu a war criminal. I'm also not a fan of this attack on Iran and prefer a peaceful and democratic overthrow of that regime. But calling the attack unprovoked is not entirely correct; Iran spends a lot of time provoking Israel.
For one, Balfour's illegal concession of Palestine to the Israelis had the clear strategic purpose of keeping pan-Arabism at bay. The ensuing establishment of Israel - by the UNSCOP, in contravention of international law - had the side effect of turbocharging settler colonialist violence (1948 and ongoing) and expansionism (e.g. 1967 annexations).
That was the background to the 1953 CIA coup, and the eventual Islamic revolution in 1979. Sure, it's not the liberal democratic outcome Iranians would've liked, but it reclaimed sovereignty lost, and they are aware of the historic role of Israel and their strategic and moral position in relation to it, regardless of their regime.
Bottom line, if we look closely at who really is threatening whom, the reactions of the Iranians are probably quite understandable
No shit the result of 1979 is not what the Iranians wanted; there have been frequent democratic uprisings since then. Most Iranians didn't really care one way or the other about Israel, although you can't really blame them for not liking the US. And Israel has never really had an issue with Iran. But it's the ayatollahs who have been extremely hostile towards Israel, and have spent decades funding Hezbollah attacks against Israel.
I'm not going to defend Israel; they've committed plenty of crimes. And war crimes. But almost entirely against the Palestinians, not against Iran.
The Middle East is complex, and there's no simply good vs evil there, but the ayatollahs are definitely not on the side of good.
Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you.
How well would you sleep at night?
And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people are taking sides on a religious war. Stay out. Stay far out. There is no winning. There is no stopping the conflict. Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. The only thing to see is human atrocities as far as the eye in the name of <your god of choice>.
> There's a state ... [that has] ... the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium
Do they? It's oft repeated. But I vaguely remember this country being sold on an Iraq invasion due to nukes. Nukes that never existed and never were close to existing. This wasn't a simple miscalculation. The nukes were entirely and knowingly fictional. And that's just one example of a bullshit made-up reason this nation has started a war to waste lives.
How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Why should I believe my country today? Why is today the day of all days that the truth is finally being told? Why is today the day that god is real and I should jump in on the bloodshed?
Your masters are lying to you, to their benefit. They didn't wake up today and decide to be honest.
> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.
How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.
> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?
Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?
They clearly and openly state that they want to force Palestinians off of their land and are using violence towards that end.
If there were a button to get rid of Palestinians, Israelis would “hit it twice”.
Uh? So can you explain the genocide?
Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up.
What? Israel is 2000 Kms away from Iran, and would want nothing do to with them if not for Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan and policy...
> Do they?
The IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, hardly a "bullshit made-up excuse"
Our elected leaders constantly attempt to expand their own power. To maximally punish whistleblowers. Our election system is ran by a duopoly who exerts extreme power over those voicing alternative views and opinions.
About democracy, it is not.
Let's say it was though. What gives us the right to blow other countries off the face of the planet? Are we somehow so much better than everyone else because we believe we're democratic? We don't even rank in the top 10 most democratic countries. We throw more people in jail than China. Per capita AND total overall. We throw more kids in jail than any other first world country [0].
Surely, democracy does not automagically lend to treating people fairly. We have enough problems in our own damn democracy to worry about. Crazy to be starting wars to "help" someone who never asked for it. Forcing violence upon those who never consented is absolutely abhorrent.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/afric...
The sudden switch yesterday from "they can't make nukes" to "they're a fortnight away from ICBMs" felt a little too reminiscent of Iraq twenty years ago.
If we want a stable Middle East, we have to stop bombing the shit out of it, and invest. Negotiate fairly for resources. Offer them a future. And demand Israel stop committing war crimes.
It is the only country that has constitutional preference for an ethnic group instead of equality of all subjects/citizens.
It is also the only country with automatic citizenship based on religion.
It is also the only country with nuclear weapons but not part of NPT. Even North Korea is a member of NPT.
The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore.
1. You have to define 'Israel' quite carefully to make it work. Palestinians in East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. Is East Jerusalem part of Israel or not?
2. There are several other democracies in the Middle East, for example Iraq and Lebanon.
3. Some of the countries which aren't democratic, would be democratic, except that representative governments were overthrown by the United States, in part to enforce cooperation with Israel, against the wishes of most of the people in the country. For example, Egypt.
Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things
Yes, it extends that support to cover apartheid colonial occupation, more-than-likely genocide by all the accepted definitions, and the usual smattering of targeting civilians, executing paramedics in marked ambulances and ethic cleansing.
Israel doesn't fear Iran's nukes. Israel fears an economically functional Iran and uses the wmd excuse to sabotage it as much as possible. The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted.
Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now.
(Edit: typo)
Why do you think there was a revolution?
Sort of? The US played a role in that shit show and it wasn’t all happy days under the Shah.
Israel is currently engaged in genocide, how would it be good for it to benefit enormously?
Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak.
Even Iran has publicly said that they have enriched to 60%. 60% is not needed for civilian uses and only useful for research in how to make it go boom.
Israel couldn't care less about Iran until 1979. It's the Islamists who are obsessed with Israel.
If Iran stopped chanting "Death to Israel" and stopped arming anti-Israeli groups then Israel would have no issue with Iran.
It's a stupid slogan because it gives politicians ammunition, but it can be interpreted various ways. For example:
Ali Al Bukhaiti, the former spokesman and the official media face of the Houthis, said: "We really do not want anyone's death. This slogan is only against the intervention of those governments [i.e. the United States and Israel]."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Israel
Meanwhile, if you judge a country by it's actions rather than it's slogans tell me how Israel is looking right now on the "death to ..." scale.
www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/un-nuclear-watchdog-censures-iran-a-move-that-could-lead-to-restore-sanctions
I can oppose IRA violence and British imperialism at the same time but if we're having a reasonable conversation we have to recognise that British colonial force in Ireland is what drove people to form the IRA.
Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities.
Before the Ottomans and various Islamic conquests it was almost entirely Christian/Roman (as was the whole Middle East). Before that Jewish.
And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there.
Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN which you reference.
False. The population in 1800 was ~90% Muslim, ~8% Christian.
> let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN
The UN had no authority to partition other people's land.
Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus...
"Palestine Partition Plan" is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), adopted on November 29, 1947. This resolution, officially titled "Future Government of Palestine," recommended the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem and its environs to be placed under a special international regime."
Who proposed the Balfour Declaration 30 years prior?
Presumably during one of the frequent rounds of forceful expulsion from European states.
The entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came.
Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion.
Can you name one Palestinian who has fought against Israel's occupation and is not considered a terrorist by you?
https://jcpa.org/the-parallels-between-yahya-sinwar-and-yass...
https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496386/Pahlavi-and-Israel-t...
so what exact goverment your arr referring?
And yet, the previous government of Iran had friendly relations with Israel, as do some other Arab and Muslim countries.
The US also has friendly relations with countries with whom it disagrees vehemently, and that do (IMO) far worse things than Israel does.
I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either.
People still have a living memory of specific properties in specific locations that they were forced out of and are now occupied by other families, often with some of their relatives killed in the process That applies both to places in Israel proper (displaced in 1940s to 1960s) and to Gaza and the West Bank (in the time since then). Even before the most recent war in Gaza, any Palestinian could be forced out of their home at any moment by an Israeli settler with no recourse.
So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is.
Well, considering that Israeli's are occupying land that rightfully belongs to someone else, I'd say not very well indeed. It's the final major European colonial outpost, and its fighting hard not to go the way of Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and a long long list of others.
First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries.
Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations.
The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers.
It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced.
Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return.
Maybe, but obviously the other side thinks exactly the same.
Religious wars were lots of fun five centuries ago. They will be funnier still in the nuclear age.
I believe this is very important to highlight, and, unfortunately, many Iranians will suffer because of the Iranian government's views.
But I do believe there are viewpoints held on both sides that can make achieving peace in that region extremely difficult. Consider these two video excerpts (You only need to watch about 10 seconds for each)
Do they? What is this based on? My understanding was that they were reacting to a pattern of imperialism of which Israel was the crown jewel. Is there actually something inherent about the Shi'ite religion which says Israel must fall?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...
Jews were often well treated and flourished in the earlier Islamic caliphates.
But with the formation of a Jewish Israel the conflict. Generally in Islamic belief there must be an Islamic caliphate with Sharia Law. Jerusalem is considered one of the holy sites of Islam and therefore belongs to that caliphate.
That’s contrasted with Judaism and Israel being the land promised to the Jews. Though modern Israel was largely founded by secular Jews so it’s a bit more complicated on that front.
In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite.
Nukes are good as a deterrent, not good as a weapon.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkUVIj3KWY
The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. The price the put on human life (their own people as much as anyone else) is low, and they're all for martyrdom. With Iran, you cannot assume it's a just a deterrent in a cold war. You have to assume an increased likelihood that they will actually use them.
Compare the number of deaths caused by Iranian weapons and those caused by Israeli weapons in the last year. Or 5 years, or 10.
Do you have some other way of defining ‘death cult’?
Be serious.
This is no justification to ignore international law. But that's dead now. Nobody will ever care again until we're done with the next big war or something. Bomb away...
There's no natural law setting the mullahs against the existence of Israel, as I said they think and vocally declaim publicly that it is divine law. Don't believe me, just look up what they say.
I do think the way this is being handled is a travesty though. There was a functioning agreement with international monitoring in place in 2016 and Trump tore it up. Since then Iran has increased their enrichment capacity, and their stockpile of enriched material by 22 time above what they committed to in that agreement. Canceling that deal was a foolish blunder that had lead us to this.
Ultimately the only path to long term peace has to be the fall of theocratic rule in Iran, but that's a mater for the Iranian people. It's quite possible the nuclear question could have been managed, but just as with NAFTA Trump saw personal political advantage is scrapping an old deal in order to rebrand it as his better deal, but dropped the ball because he doesn't understand the geopolitics, and here we are.
Trump wanted another deal and told Bibi not to attack. Bibi didn't want that and attacked. Trump jumped on the bandwagon and now everybody is talking about him again.
So you're saying we're here because America has mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations and this is the best move?
Religion is just another ideology, and it s not like Islam has a specific position about nuclear energy
Energy is fine, but nukes are haram. This is THE reason they haven't built any nukes the last 40+ years.
Changing a religious decree of that nature requires a very big excuse which has never existed. Israel and the US threatening Iran's existence and threatening to kill millions of Muslims is the ONE thing I can think of that would allow Khamenei an "out" to actually build a nuke.
By this I mean the religious ideological move is eternal punishment for what they deem unsatisfactory or eternal bliss for compliance, no other branch.
Other ideologies invoke similar (infinite growth in capitalism, e.g.) but those are hyperbole for proselytization. An ideology that attempts to persuade with either the most egregious stick possible or the most delicious carrot possible makes religion the least palatable of ideologies.
Whether this fulfills that goal, we will see, but anything that weakens the regime is good for the Iranian people.
And then twenty years from now everyone will say they were always against it.
During Iraq the US military deployed some insanely creative strategies with the deployment of concrete- yet nothing meaningful was actually built for the people of Iraq...
And if anything, the last 20 years taught us that revolutions imposed from the outside never work
regime change has never worked, not with actual boots on the ground, let alone targeted air strikes.
But can you define what "this moment" is that they have been waiting for?
I don't think "this moment" helps them along the way. It is rather a reason for more internal repression.
Couple that with a population of at least 80 million people who hate the regime and only didn’t fight back because the regime had physical power over them.
There were numerous groups of Iranians protesting against Israel's actions and in support of the Palestinians. These are Iranians living abroad so can be expected statistically to be less supportive of the current government than the average Iranian resident.
The counter-protest, mainly of pro-Israel demonstrators, this time also had Iranians, demonstrating against the current regime (and broadly in support of Israel). All the Iranian flags in this very small group were the Shah-era design with the lion.
The visibly Iranian groups in the pro-Palestinian demo vastly outnumbered the counter protest. They seemed quite ideologically diverse. There were some people holding pictures of the ayatollah with the words 'No Surrender'. But there were also groups with the sign "don't bomb us and claim it's for women's rights" (can't remember exact wording). Groups including women with headscarves, other groups with only bare headed women. As well as the current official flag with the swords, I saw people holding the lion flag, and others with the neutral tricolour without emblem. So at least some of the people present were anti the current regime, but supported the Palestinians in the current conflict.
Obviously a very selective sampling for many reasons, but far from what you might expect if almost all Iranians were united against their current government.
On the reddit NewIran sub, they were mocking a picture of somebody at one of those rally’s holding a giant IRGC flag… upside-down.
I wouldn’t use numbers of “useful idiots” showing up at rallies as a way of demonstrating internal support for the Iranian regime.
Surveys suggest around 70-80% are anti-regime, which makes sense considering the regime’s history of hangings and imprisonment for minor offenses. The people of Iran want the regime to end.
Oh, enough to look at Libya, Syria, Iraq, to see what happens next:
1. Lots of infrastructure would be destroyed. It's the first thing NATO does in any invasion: bomb powerplants, water treatment plants, airports, hospitals, business centers (remember, that Iraq invasion started with destroying Baghdad business center, it was shown in all Western media). Infrastructure is super-expensive to rebuild, many countries in the world have no resources to build decent infrastructure.
2. At least several millions of Iranians would die. It's obvious. Somebody's moms and dads, somebody's children. The bombs do not choose. And we all know that West is indifferent to the deaths of non-Western non-white population (remember, e.g. killings and war crimes in Afghanistan).
3. In the end the country will end up in half-feudal anarchistic ruins (like Libya) or with "democratic" puppet government. Any outcome will allow selling Iran oil and gas to the West for the price of water, further lowering living standards of Iran.
I fail to see a single benefit for anyone living in Iran.
People never, ever, under any circumstances, want to be attacked and bombed by another country. Not even the biggest dissidents rotting in regime jails would welcome this. Not even a little bit.
Depends on the effectiveness of the bombing.
It is one thing to not like the political leadership, but another thing if the government oppresses the population.
Those of us in America are privileged that we can’t fathom what that means.
No, 80 million people don't want to end the regime. Westerners can't fathom the fact that not everyone wants to live in a democratic free-for-all.... so clearly anyone who doesn't deserves bombing.
Pathetic. Imperialism is encoded in the DNA of Americans at this point.
they do have a massive popular support issue over there
Internet used to joke about US "freedom bombs", but it's taken quite seriously and positively there.
People lack common sense, but not their appetite to ingurgitate the daily three meals that the propaganda machines prepared for them.