Right, so stuff about how terroristic Hezbollah is/was isn't motivating to me. I'm not more OK with strikes on Hezbollah because they were "terrorists"; they were a military force, the largest in Lebanon, operated by Iran, launching a continuous stream of rockets (several per day) into Israel. By any normal standards, an act of war by Iran.
I don't think "acts of war" mean much in real statecraft; there's no referee, things are what people say they are and outcomes are determined by military and economic power. But anyone going down that path has to recognize the hole Iran dug for itself here. They didn't have to do any of this.
But the people of Iran, for very obvious reasons, do not like the real leadership of Iran, and Iran does a lot of things just to keep that leadership structure intact.
Finally, and super-importantly: I think HN is just a weird place to have these kinds of discussions, and I'm very sure nobody who's angry at me about my takes on these things know what I actually believe about any of this stuff --- and why should they? What I believe about any of this is immaterial. Like every nerd, I'm motivated to comment when I see something I "know" to be wrong; that's all that's happening on these threads.
In this particular thread, I only appeared because I think the GBU-57 is a very goofy munition. I had previous to last week thought it was like some ultra-explosive "close as you can get to nuclear without being nuclear" kind of weapon. But nope, it's just a normal bomb strapped to a giant anvil. That's weird! Seems HN-y to comment on.
(But now I'm here and I see things like "the SL of Iran has declared nuclear weapons Haram" and, like, I'm not going to let that fly past! But also: not pretending there's anything useful about this discussion. If it's annoying to you, stop engaging! That's what I'm doing.)
