> There are no indications that Iran intends to use nuclear weapons against Israel.

The Iranian government are rather extreme theocrats, but they aren’t a suicide cult. They know that a nuclear first strike against Israel would result in massive nuclear retaliation aimed at annihilating Iran as a modern nation-state. They aren’t going to do that.

I think their primary reason for pursuing nuclear weapons is as a deterrent against conventional invasion, forcible “regime change” like what the US did to Saddam Hussein - much as Iran welcomed the removal of one of their national archenemies - given Iraq is majority Shi’a, a democratic Iraq is generally more friendly to Iran, although not all Iraqi Shi’a are pro-Iranian (e.g. Ayatollah Sistani, who is very influential, dislikes how Iran has politicised the religion) - but it raised the risk the Americans might try the same thing on them.

Yes.

> I think their primary reason for pursuing nuclear weapons is as a deterrent against conventional invasion

Israel just showed how effective that deterrent is.

> Please don’t act as if you don’t know that you are peddling nonsense.

You can't comment like this on Hacker News, no matter what you're replying to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When a person writes something that is obviously nonsensical it should be called out as such. This is especially so when the topic is about ongoing acts of war.

If it's an important topic, which it is, it's all the more important to convey the substance of your point, without the abusive barbs. Dropping the swipe "Please don’t act as if you don’t know that you are peddling nonsense" would have made all the difference. We can't know what people "know" when they write things on a discussion board.

I disagree. The logic used was so bad that the most reasonable conclusion is that it was deliberately so. This is my opinion. I could be wrong.

You can be wrong / right and you can be polite / rude

those two are unrelated. Being right and rude (or worse) is not great for a discussion, especially on a topic like this one.

In general I agree. But not in this case. In the “polite” approach what happens is that obviously bad assertions are made and one politely engages but the starting point is such that you are engaged in an attempt to just get to a reasonable place. It’s sort like how combatting a lie is much more effort than spreading one.

My comment above was not for the person who made. I don’t engage with such people. It was for the people who stumbled upon it. I want them to know that there are people who think the comment is ridiculously bad.

There's no "not in the case" on HN, though. People can figure out the quality of a comment themselves, perhaps helped along by a comment that disputes what the first comment says. But the idea you're doing everyone some service by trashing the place is misplaced, it's just not how things work.

I disagree.

You don’t have to agree, you just can’t comment like that on HN.

But I did comment like that becuase I don’t agree with what you said. I will continue to comment like I did where I deem appropriate. You are free to ban me or get someone to ban me.

Nobody is interested in banning you, people are simply asking you not to shit in the place they use so that they and you can continue using it.

Trying to present this shitting as some sort of principled martyrdom or, heaven help us, favour to the rest of us is silly, selfish and unconvincing. Just ease off on the shitting in the future, it's not like most everyone else has any trouble doing it.

Martyrdom? I’m not important enough or self centered enough to have any feelings of martyrdom with regard to this site. I was just letting you know that I don’t agree with you and I’m not going to stop. As such the only option is for me to be banned. Pointing out this fact does not qualify as martyrdom.

If you cannot make your point clear politely you also cannot force it into people. It just look terrible for everyone reading the conversation. I actually agree with the direction your argument but can't agree with the form. And also unfortunately if you position was the opposite, the moderation would be less severe, but it is what it is. This is an US American forum after all.

It's not like Iran did this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2024_Iranian_strikes_aga... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes_o...

The U.S. shot down a civilian Iranian airplane and killed around 200 people. The commander of the ship that did this later got promoted. This does not mean the U.S. wants to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Your points are not valid.

Can you give source on him getting a promotion?

He did not get promoted later. I was wrong. But he wasn’t fired, relieved of command or put in jail. He later received an award for his naval service. But all of this irrelevant to the point I made.

When a Soviet fighter pilot shot down a Korean jetliner the U.S. reaction to that was quite a bit different than our reaction to the Vincennes shooting down the Iranian jetliner.