Edit: 3 months, and source: https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2...

Saddam also had WMDs, we just don't know where.

Etc

My project managers often ask how long a project would take. I might say something like "two weeks after we're approved to start".

The PMs will wait a few months, approve the project, and then look flabbergasted when it is not instantaneously completed! "But you had all this time! Months ago you said it would take weeks!"

Presumably if Saddam had built a large reinforced concrete bunker deep in the side of a mountain hours from the nearest city, that might be a place fairly high on your checklist?

an iran with a bomb would have to not be the relogious dictatorship anymore, and whatever coup that allowed for the bomb might not have the same opinions about the west as the current one

On that page you can download an unclassified 2025 Annual Threat Assessment [pdf] where on page 26 it states:

>> We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so. In the past year, there has been an erosion of a decades-long taboo on discussing nuclear weapons in public that has emboldened nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decisionmaking apparatus. Khamenei remains the final decisionmaker over Iran’s nuclear program, to include any decision to develop nuclear weapons.

I also think there is more reading in there that may interest people here.

[0] https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/reports-publications/...

[pdf] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-202...

The nuclear physicists got the glory for the Manhattan Project, but the enrichment was the vast majority of the time and cost[1]. Similar ratios apply today. There is zero question that Iran's government is spending a significant fraction of its GDP on enrichment activity that would be economically absurd except as a step towards nuclear weapons--they acknowledge it proudly!

That doesn't mean these strikes were necessarily a good idea. There's no question that Iran was working actively towards a bomb though, even if "building a weapon" gets redefined narrowly to exclude almost all the actual effort.

1. https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-...

"Breakout time" is how long it takes a country between the political decision to build a nuclear weapon, and actually having one which is militarily usable

Agreed. However, taking into account the full statement (provided by the collective U.S. Intelligence Services) to include the parts about: Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003 and that he has final say in the matter, says they were not working actively towards a bomb.

But there was growing advocation for doing so. Now they have been emboldened further and been given fuel to advocate restarting the program. If Khamenei had so far kept the pro-nuke elements of the regime at bay, this strike may force the very thing that foreign Intelligence roped us into "stopping".

I am not saying they did not have the means; they will rebuild the means, and now they will have the motivation as well as know-how in a way that will be more difficult to stop.

I think this becomes a definitions game again. I'd consider a country to be "working actively towards a bomb" when it's taking costly steps that provide no commensurate benefit except towards a nuclear weapons program. At that point, there's no rational explanation for their actions except that they're working towards the bomb.

So e.g. enrichment of uranium to <3.67% (as permitted by the JCPOA) is not such a step, since that's also economically useful for civilian nuclear power. Enrichment to 60% is such a step--the only conceivable civilian uses are niches for which the cost would far exceed any benefit.

It seems you agree they're enriching in the latter way, but you don't count that as "working actively towards a bomb". So what definition are you using for that phrase? We obviously can't just let the Iranian government decide, or they'll define everything short of a successful test as part of their "peaceful explosive lenses program" or whatever.

My general sense is that the JCPOA was working reasonably well, and it's unfortunate that Trump exited. To the extent these strikes were a necessary solution, they might be to a problem of his own making. I agree that Iran could be emboldened and merely delayed here. That may imply an inevitable endgame of either regime change or near-total destruction of Iran's economic capacity, big escalations and risks.

This stinks of Iraq & WMD. Which the U.S. Intelligence made drastic changes to prevent happening again.

Only now we were on the side of saying there is no proof it was actively being worked on, and the person/state with "proof" also happens to be the state that has been bitterly opposed to Iran and started launching unprovoked missiles. That state also knows how to get what it wants from this administration and suddenly we go from, there is no proof they are doing nefarious things with their program, to they are about nuke us all if we don't do something; all in a matter of weeks.

Yes & No. Thats what I understood the Trump campaign promised, to stop military meddling in other countries religious (or otherwise) conflicts.

Diplomacy is not nothing, and has kept the Iran program from restarting (going by US reports that it was stopped). Now it is all but sure to start up again. Unless the goal was for the US to be suckered into forcing a regime change, and we all know how well those attempts have gone.

> I am surprised we hadn’t attacked them earlier given what they did to our troops in Iraq with EFPs

If it happened at that time with proof and congressional approval then okay, but thats not an excuse for now. Thats how states end up in a war that lasts for a couple or more millennia

Everyone keeps saying Trump didn’t have approval when Congress authorized this

Or the alternative being the JCPOA. Which was an agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions.

An agreement which failed because the US side reimplemented the sanctions while Iran was in compliance with the agreement.

Switzerland's nuclear program stayed one step away from actually putting together a nuclear weapon for several decades straight. The fact that they could become a nuclear power, but haven't, and could credibly restart their program if attacked, is of strategic importance to them.

Is it building towards a bomb if your intention is to sit on the precipice of building a nuclear weapon for the rest of time, leveraging your position as deterrence, but never going over the edge? I have no idea! I also have no idea whether this describes Iran. Saying that there's "no question" they were building towards a bomb is ignoring this question, though.

As to intent, the concept of "deterrence, but never going over the edge" doesn't really exist--if you're never going over the edge, then where does the deterrence come from? At best it's a bluff, like threatening someone with an unloaded gun. But would you really want to bet your life that Iran has put maybe a quarter of their GDP (including sanctions impact; the program itself is much less) into a bluff? We can't read minds, and their costly actions seem like much more reliable signals than our guesses at their intent.

Switzerland is an odd comparison, since they got their capabilities in what they openly described as the initial stages of a nuclear weapons program. Since abandoning that, Switzerland has been divesting its enriched uranium. If Switzerland were instead building up its stockpile while funding proxies to (conventionally) strike its neighbors, then I'd expect some combination of sanctions and military action there too.

Exactly the same place as the deterrence in MAD. You don't intend to immediately nuke your geopolitical rivals when you build the bomb, you intend to sit around with a metaphorical shotgun aimed at your door for the rest of time.

> If Switzerland were instead building up its stockpile while funding proxies to (conventionally) strike its neighbors, then I'd expect some combination of sanctions and military action there too.

Sure, I agree. I approve of the strikes against Iran in principle. I still don't believe there's "no question" that Iran was going to build a nuclear weapon if nobody else intervened.

I don't see why intent requires immediacy? Perhaps this becomes uselessly philosophical, but I would say MAD requires the defending state to intend to nuke its adversary, conditioned on some future event (a nuclear attack on themselves, an existential conventional attack, etc.). They hope that condition is never satisfied, but intend to strike if it is.

> I still don't believe there's "no question" that Iran was going to build a nuclear weapon if nobody else intervened.

For clarity, I don't believe that either. By "working actively towards", I mean only that Iran was taking costly steps that bring them closer to a working bomb, and no other rational purpose could justify those costs. I think the distinction of what such steps we count as "lowering latency" vs. "building a bomb" is arbitrary and mostly meaningless, since as the latency approaches zero the latter goal is effectively achieved.

I agree that Iran might just have been saber-rattling; or even if they currently intended to build and test a complete bomb, they might have discontinued the program before succeeding. I just don't think intent is a useful focus (vs. practical capabilities), since it's fundamentally unknowable and could change at any time.

But what does this generic knowledge have to do with anything, when the military action is already decided for geo-political reasons? The only decision to make is what pretext to use.

In a way, the 'iraq wmd' justification has proven it's value as a pretext - so why not tweak it and use it again?

The past two-ish decades has made it clear that nuclear weapons are the only defense against an aggressive power arbitrarily invading.

The biggest global risk in this case would be that tactical nukes would be back on the menu which would immediately change the face of modern warfare.

OK, they never signed up to it, but still.

Trusting the US or any agreement with it would be foolish.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/08/donald-trump-iran-a...

Ted Cruz can blather whatever he wants (and he also footnoted it to say it was only HIS belief), but only Iran has holy-text justification for the destruction of all Jews, mentioned numerous times in authenticated Hadiths (just search them for "The last hour will not come")

For more, see https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0083590/

So, with that being said - which nuclear-obsessive theocracy do you support?

Conversely there is no religious reason for anyone in Israel or the US to attack Iran, independently of the belief that they should defend Israel.

going by project 2025, theres a very significant and influential portion of the american conservative sphere that is pants on head evangelical. and the idea of supporting israel as their christian duty is a huge part of that

lets not pretend this isnt the crusades with nukes. all parties here are operating on barbaric political principles

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/red-heifer-temple-institute/

[1] https://cbn.com/news/israel/first-time-after-2000-years-isra...

Even supposing Iran developed a nuclear weapon, their ability to engage in nuclear retaliation depends on (a) the number of warheads, (b) the available delivery mechanisms

An Iran which had only a handful of warheads, and rather limited delivery mechanisms (few or no ICBMs, no SLBMs, no long-range bomber capability) might find its ability to engage in nuclear retaliation against the US extremely limited

Even attempting to use nuclear weapons against Israel or regional US allies, there would be a massive attempt by Israel/US/allies to intercept any nuclear armed missile before it reached its destination

People argued missile defence (as in Reagan's "Star Wars") would never work against the Soviets because they could always just overwhelm it given the superabundance of warheads and delivery systems they had. The same logic does not apply to Iran, because even if it did build a nuke, initially it would only have a handful. Only if they were allowed to build out their nuclear arsenal and delivery systems without intervention, over an extended period, might that eventually come true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device

But they do have ballistic missiles and can hit US allies

north korea and pakistan actually have nukes. we can be sure of that because of the bullshit they get up to with full impunity from the US. iran doesnt have shit (and it might even have been working in good faith with the nato initiatives, although probably not 100%) thats why it got bombed. and they are gonna learn a fool me once lesson from this. they're gonna go even harder on the anti US pole with china, with the people begrudgingly backing the regime that could have toppled soviet style if the US was patient.

this whole thing was shortsighted from israel and trump should have kept to his "america first" promise

- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past nuclear-reactor grade. What's that? They're enriching past 5%?

- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past medical purposes grade. What's that? They're enriching past 20%?

- There's no evidence Iran has enough to build bombs. What's that? They have enough to build 10 bomb?

- There's no evidence they have a way to deliver bombs <-- you are here

If Israel doesn't continuously try to stop Iran, they might even have a 10 Megaton ICBM and you'll be saying "there's no evidence Iran has ever said it want's to destroy Israel".

The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable. Washington, D.C. has some drone and missile defenses. But the rest of the east coast is not protected much.

Iran could also attack the US with drones launched from a small ship off the US east coast. Roughly the same technique Ukraine just used on Russia, using some small expendable ship instead of a trailer.

.

This would mean complete suicide for Iran. The US military basically exists to inflict unimaginable hurt on anyone who does this. Not to mention, an attack on the US is an attack on NATO.

Donald Trump has made it very clear that the US should be looked upon as an adversary.

Iran would definitely possess nuclear weapons after doing something like that. The only question is whether they're armed to explode in the air or when they hit the ground.

It led Iran to make 2 decisions

- Accelerate production of IRBM in order to have 10000 in stock and to build 1000 launchers in order to execute massive launches that will not possible to defend against

- Apparently the did decide to mate their IRBM with nukes as recently there was meeting between whoever managed iranian missiles problem and heads of nuclear project (there is economist article about it).

This comes against backdrop of hamas and hezbollah been wiped. especially hezbollah which was supposed to be strike force against israel with estimated 100k-200k missiles and rockets.

but now after their command was wiped out and they can't sell aid, they have serious financial problems (they need to pay their fighters. it's very transactional).

but in case idf will leave gaza, they will have enough power to dominate the strip.

I'm skeptical of this; any source?

For clarification, those interception efforts last year required massive assistance from the US and Jordan, and required a hugely disproportionate and unsustainable investment of munitions to pull off. What we've seen in the last week is that Israeli air defenses are much more brittle than they want anyone to believe.

I wonder if anything started happening recently that would make Iran less interested in cooperating with the IAEA?

In fact, I think all evidence points to them removing assets from inspected sites knowing that those sites would soon be targets.

> Just explain why you have 60% enriched uranium.

For leverage, obviously.

If Israel were Iran's only rival then it would obviously do everything in its power to become nuclear capable because Israel violated international law to become nuclear capable. However, Iran has many rivals and does not want to set off a nuclear arms race in the middle east.

They also hoped to use the nuclear program as a bargaining chip to lift sanctions.

So Iran had reason to set themselves up to be able to get nuclear weapons, without actually getting nuclear weapons.

Now, that whole policy looks foolish and Iran's only real rational option is to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-38.pd...

the purpose of the bomb shelter seems obvious - israel is gonna be bombing because israel likes bombing stuff

I'm tired of the US playing puppetmaster (poorly) around the world, getting involved in conflicts that have nothing to do with us (or rather, creating conflicts when it has to do with access to oil or something). And it's not like we haven't messed up Iran enough already.

But I do not want a nuclear-armed Iran to be a thing. If they were working on it and had a solid program that was likely to bear fruit, I hate to say it, but this was probably the right move. But this is a big "if"; I don't trust this administration to tell the truth about any of this, no more than I trusted Bush Jr when he said Iraq had nukes.

Edit: If you mean "Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)" [1], that report explicitly mentions up to 60% which is not weapons grade.

[0]: https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2... [1]: https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-24.pd...

Yes, 60% enriched Uranium is not weapons-grade, but it can be made weapons grade very quickly. Once you've gotten to 60%, you've done 99% of the work - U-235 starts as such a small percentage of natural Uranium that most of the process is spent at very low concentrations.

It can simultaneously be true that Iran isn't "imminently creating a bomb" and also that they're actively working towards a breakout point where they could build a dozen bombs in very quick succession once they did decide to go forwards with the process.

I don't personally think they were rushing towards a bomb at this moment, but Israel isn't really in the mood to wait around until they decide to do so.

It turns out there's a big gap between most peaceful purposes and weapons grade, and this was in that gap.

> Uranium with enrichments ranging from 40% to 80% U-235 has been used in large amounts in U.S. thermonuclear weapons as a yield-boosting jacketing material for the secondary fusion stage

Source: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq6.html#nfaq6.2

edit: phrasing. it feels like we're going around in circles nitpicking based on a poor framing and the tendency for innuendo on this topic

Also, you can use 60% enriched uranium in the primary stage at the cost of a much larger, less efficient, and dirty device.

All modern nukes are two stage designs, Iran would be insane not to have a fusion stage. It would basically be a Hiroshima style dirty bomb with just 1.5% fissible mass actually fissioned.

Hiroshima was pretty terrible as it was. And I thought the capability that everyone focuses on because it gets nations a seat at the nuclear table was just basic fission weapons. But please correct me if I am wrong.

The bottleneck is UF₆ centrifuges, not the modeling. They're definitely aiming for a fission-fusion design: "The sources note that Iran has attempted to produce deuterium-tritium gas on its own inside Iran - with the help of Russian scientists - but has so far been unable to do so, and due to pressures by the Iranian leadership to accelerate the weapons production program, decided to try to purchase this substance abroad." [0]

India and Pakistan did their first tests ~30 years ago, a lot has changed since then and if you're building a nuke in '25 might as well spend some cash on a simulation cluster and buy some multiphysics simulation software from Russia..

[0] The sources note that Iran has attempted to produce deuterium-tritium gas on its own inside Iran - with the help of Russian scientists - but has so far been unable to do so, and due to pressures by the Iranian leadership to accelerate the weapons production program, decided to try to purchase this substance abroad.

Maybe I'm just putting too much weight on the trials and tribulations of developing the first fusion bombs, and the details of solving or working around those problems is widely known in the right circles these days? Plus advancements in simulation accuracy?

Do words mean nothing to you?

That same comment also said, even led with “flies in the face of”. That was the most important part of the comment: ‘saying that Iran is enriching weapons-grade uranium “flies in the face of” intelligence reports which reported no weapons-grade uranium.’ But that part was not correct: the difference between Iran’s uranium (60% enriched) and weapons-grade uranium, while >0, is not large enough to characterize that assessment “flying in the face of”.

So yes if you focus on that substring of the comment you are right. But why would you? It’s not the point of the comment.

Which makes it nit picking. Which is why you’re getting so much pushback.

Saying it’s not weapons grade only means you haven’t finished or intend to use something else for the initial stage.

So in other words it’s not weapons grade?

Reduced fat milk is often specifically referring to 2% milk, but 1% milk is also reduced fat milk.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding around this stuff. Technically all you need for a bomb is the ability to go prompt critical on demand which you can do at surprisingly low enrichment levels. What’s a useful weapons grade enrichment to you has a lot to do with your delivery systems not some universal constant. If you’re looking to fit something in a WWII bomber or early generation ICBM that imposes specific limitations.

And yes, in an alternative universe where delivery systems also just appear out of nowhere, you could sprinkle a million tons of 1% uranium over a city.

You can buy a used A380 for a few 10’s of millions. Convert that to a drone is fairly cheap, and you end up with a deleverage system vastly cheaper than the cost of producing a nuclear bomb.

Obviously a subsonic aircraft isn’t ideal, but historic ICBM’s ended up being designed for multiple bombs that’s a lot of leeway if you use the same system to deliver a single bomb. What the US considered weapons grade in the 40’s through the Cold War is based on assumptions that simply don’t apply here.

Do you have a citation for this?

60% is just a stepping stone towards 90%.

To get 1kg of U-235 requires 1.11kg at 90% purity, 1.67kg at 60% purity, and 140.6kg at natural 0.711% purity.

Was what Iran doing illegal?

Because this is what underlies all of this -- is the premise that Iran is behaving in an unacceptable and illegal fashion and therefore a legal response with violence is justified.

This all presupposes that Iran is breaking the law with their production of nuclear weapons. Are they breaking the law with their production of nuclear weapons?

Was Iran's activities funding militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which launched attacks against Israel and US forces "legal"? Which of the US' activities were "legal"? It's all mostly a bad joke.

However Iran has the stated intention of destroying the state of Israel, and actively incites it's proxies to attack Israel, and this could be seen as a valid justification for taking action. Not a lawyer though.

Is the US funding of Ukrainian militias "legal"?

Geopolitics operates in an explicitly anarchic arena.

Not that we would or should but the US could attack any number of countries today and only if one or more countries stopped the US would the victor be able to say it’s illegal.

Besides, there is no non-military need for enriching uranium beyond a few percent, so it's very clear what those 60% mean.

Has the Iranian government ever explained why they are enriching uranium?

Say you have 10 ton of 2.5% enriched uranium to safeguard. If you turn it to 60% HEU, now you have only ~400kg of fuel to safeguard against air raids. Density of uranium is ~19 ton/m³, so that would correspond to just 21 liters of HEU, one bucket worth, what would make it very easy to transport and hide. That would make it possible to split it and store in safe locations, for example, inside some deep boreholes, far apart to each other, making it impervious to attack, for the duration of hostilities. Once they pass, it can be recovered and diluted back to 2.5% with natural uranium, reconstituting your original 10-ton fuel amount.

No the US was claiming: "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so." in it's 2025 Threat Assessment. The reports believes they were not working on them and Khamenei has the final authority to restart the program which he had not done. However, they believe there was growing pressured to do so.

Trump just gave the guy reason to green light a weapons project he had so far not wanted.

[pdf] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-202...

Which shows how much of BS the pro-war argument was to begin with.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Iran

So apparently it's humourous to kill.

It's not like for like, but if you have a rabid population with low education being told to say stuff like this, they will, just because of social pressure and brainwashing.

Related, example of that brainwashing at scale:

- Killing people bad, but patriotic as a soldier.

- Killing people fine on TV, procreational entertainment bad.

- People told what to wear bad, but telling people they must be clothed, good.

- Religion says no killing, or protect those not of the same religion. People still kill, seen as no conflict of interest at all.

- Hording wealth seen as successful, yet society and the world has people suffering and illegal immigration as a consequence of not having it.

- People who don't work are grifters, but most people secretly want to quit their job and not work. Told to see the non workers as people sponging off society.

- Forced to work until your health fails, seen as acceptable.

Point being, no moral high ground because we're all brainwashed.

vs.

> Some band in the USA wrote a song about bombing Iran in 1980.

Yeah, those are completely equal.

Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393

If the regime survives, now Iranian people have a very good reasons to ignore its shortcomings and tyranny and Do a proper sacrifice. It’s a natural resources rich nation of 90 million people. If they want to get serious, they can get serious.

Just recently Trump tried to troll the Germany’s leader for it and only got a “Thank you for defeating us”.

The truth is that Iran’s regime is indeed a very shitty one and a lot of people have grievances with it but the problem is, this is about Israel and they are not any better and didn’t stand at a higher moral ground with their illegal occupation and actions that many consider genocidal.

Relative to their last, America-backed regime? I don't think you're looking at this from an Iranian perspective at all.

Is there any good reporting out there or sentiment analysis that can show this? Or is it all word of mouth on the Internet? It's okay if there is nothing, but I'd feel a lot better if there was something substantial to back this up too.

and a war that killed 400,000 Americans.

You want to repeat that history?

1939, Nazi Germany starts fucking around and nobody does anything about it and then we have WWII on our hands.

You've totally missed the point. It's precisely because we didn't "properly" bomb Germany to stop that first invasion of Poland, that WWII happened and we lost 400,000 Americans, 6 million Jews etc.

* The militarization of the Rhineland in 1936

* The Anschluss with Austria in March 1938

* The annexation of the Sudetenland (and the rest of Czechoslovakia) in October 1938

The German army was weak in the 1930s and his generals very hesitant. Hitler's "reckless" successes gave him credibility and power.

Apparently Hitler was genuinely surprised when the west declared war after the invasion of Poland. He expected the cowardly West to roll over again.

I recommend Childers' "World War II: A Military and Social History" if you're into this kind of thing.

I mean, if we're going to ruminate over alternate timelines why fast forward to the 1930s..?

Furthermore, the foreign policy of the Nazis was informed more by their ideological myths than external events. After all, the Nazis admired the Great Imperialist Powers like the British Empire as part of the "Aryan Race". Their enmity was directed at Eastern Europe and the Communists, which had little to do with the enactment of post-war reparations on Germany.

Well, skip forward in 2023 and here we are again...

https://cherwell.org/2023/05/28/oxford-union-votes-not-to-fi...

Perhaps forcing regime changes on other countries shouldn't be a quick decision.

That is literally the ultimate ambition of this war.

There's a long list of middle eastern countries where we've installed our stooges.

And Iran executes plenty of journalists too.

Maybe. But overall Saudi Arabia has been undergoing pretty dramatic changes in recent years: Women can now drive, are no longer required to wear a hijab, are allowed to work, can meet with male friends/non-relatives without the police stopping them, etc. Yes, it's still a far cry from what women are allowed to do in western countries, and absolute change is still slow, but relatively speaking it's still quite impressive and gives me (and apparently people there) hope.

Source: I was in Saudi and talked to people.

Overall, there seemed to be a rather pronounced divide between the cities and the country side: In the cities you did see the occasional woman without hijab, some women working (particularly in the hospitality industry), and a few women driving (though still not many). Meanwhile, in more rural areas tradition strongly prevailed. So none of the things I mentioned are really commonplace yet (not even in the cities) – it's just that at the very least they're legal now and people (women) are making their first baby steps towards enjoying their newfound freedom.

So they want to either change the regime or change the regime, and don't much care which one?

The PA didn't really come close to negotiating peace and given Hamas were not able to. See Hamas' suicide bombing campaign during the Oslo peace process. The PA, somewhat as a response to Israeli policy, decided to pursue trying to force Israel to yield via a combination of armed and political struggle and not negotiate with it. Strangely enough security cooperation did continue throughout (and the PA is basically supported by the IDF otherwise it would likely have been toppled). This all happened after the Oslo peace process collpased due to Hamas.

The Wikipedia article does not mention this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Palestinian_general_elect... but that doesn't mean anything given the current sorry state of that site, and this article supports this idea: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-electe...

This is relevant to the coup: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/04/usa.israelandt...

Thanks for the extra colour here.

This is more likely to be the end of the American empire than an actual change in Iran.

It is also completely unnecessary. There are two options. Either the current regime makes a "deal" or it's going to get crippled to the point of irrelevance or removed.

Iran and Iraq are very different. Different culture, people and history. It's also worth remembering Iran is not homogeneous, only 61% of the population are Persians. There are Azeri, there are Kurds and various other ethnic/region minorities.

Iran is extremely vulnerable. It has internal issues, constantly oppressing/suppressing its people. Its economy is in terrible shape. Most of its economic engine can be easily taken out (its main oil terminals). The bulk of its military can be destroyed from the air, it has little defensive or offensive capability. They know it.

There are much much softer targets than Tel Aviv, many of which Iran has successfully attacked in the past.

The argument that the Iranian people hate their autocratic government might be correct. But a symmetric argument can be made about many of the regimes which work with the United States. No one in those countries is going to war with Iran to defend the US right to have military bases in the Middle East.

If Ramat Gan is not safe, then the UAE's resorts and airports, Saudi's oil processing facilities, the US installations in Iraq and in the Gulf, etc are not even remotely safe.

Israel has taken a lot of damage but relatively little loss of life.

Iran would be foolish to expand the war and they know it. They're not going to attack the UAE or Saudi. Iran's bluff has been called.

from an israeli perspective, things cant be going better. if the US gets pulled into invading iran, then their only effective opponent in the world is vietnam'd. which is great if your soldiers arent the ones dying to IEDs.

without iranian funding/management, Hamas shrivels up and palestine is open to be ethnically cleansed. israel wins a 3000 year old war, and only has to deal with sternly worded letters from the UN for it.

against who? the persians beat the babylonian tyrants and enabled the rebuilding of the temple way back when. Cyrus is a messiah rather than ancient enemy

Say you give the Kurds their own part of Iran and help protect their area could weaken the rest. I think there is already such a deal in in Iraq afaik.

how are you gonna do that without boots on the ground?

Trump talking about annexing canada made them go from being sick of the liberal party becuase of trudeau to swinging back around to supporting it to an upset victory because they were the only ones standing up to america. and thats america's closest ally, iran is their most bitter foe

this is either gonna end any chance of cooling things off with iran (and make them realize they need a nuclear deterrent yesterday), or turn into another vietnam/afghanistan

the regime was unpopular, the US could have collapsed them slowly like they did the soviets, but instead they let israel's "trust me bro" on nukes pull them into another quagmire.

You think we need to occupy them? This isn't Iraq.

I would be shocked if there were 50 million atheists in America. Maybe if you included people who are spiritual but do not believe directly in a god. Maybe I could accept it then, but at that point, you are stretching the definition of 'atheist' to its breaking point.

https://gamaan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GAMAAN-Iran-Re...

This survey is heavily weighted towards emigres and people who know emigres.

A few bombs, everyone comes out of closet, unconditional surrender, democracy, live happily ever after... Sounds like American movie...

war and conflict are almost always bipartisan to some degree.

[0]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-reporting-team-that-g_n_9... [1]: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iraq/journalism-press-failed-...

This is a stupid war being waged by idiots against idiots . Unfortunately none of those idiots calling the shots will die, it'll be a bunch of kids who just made the mistake of not being rich and powerful enough.

(If you mean Muslims, or Arabs, there are plenty of those in the Israeli parliament too.)

Is this, in your mind, how empires end? I'm not sure if you've cracked a history book in a while, but immigrants built this country. We are a country of immigrants. We win when we get the hardest working, most entrepreneurial, boldest and smartest people to come here. Immigrants are no couch potatoes - on average they work harder than American born citizens do by an order of magnitude for way less pay.

Does it have the political will? No way!

Michael Shurkin-- a former rand analyst and I strongly recommend his podcast-- says that politicians say "there is no military solution" when they mean there is no military solution that people would politically support. The US could do all sorts of things in Iran but the US people would not accept the casualties or the human rights abuses.

Good ol US was fine though, if that's what you mean.

I cannot. Ground occupation, yes. But afaict bombing just reinforces the regime.

The Iranian regime is very centralized and with Israel and the USA having air superiority and having penetrated it completely from an intelligence perspective (see Israel's perfect knowledge of the whereabouts of the previous chief of staff and the newly appointed chief of staff) it's going to be very hard for it to survive if a decision is made to remove it. There are a handful of key people that once gone there is not going to be any continuity.

The current regime is allowed to continue because of fear of chaos if it is removed, not because there isn't a capability to remove it.

Again, no bombing campaigns led to a change of regime. This theory is proven again and again

Regardless, a sovereign country was bombed tonight just because they can. This, IMHO, can have very bad outcomes for the peace worldwide since it means that anybody who can bomb someone can just go ahead and do it. No more international order.

What's next then? Bomb Brussels because EU doesn't buy chicken from USA? This stuff isn't OK.

The regime change in Iran can be a silver lining if it changes with something more cooperative. But yes, I agree that this is unlikely.

The dictatorial nature of Trump's order to attack a nation is far more concerning. Supposedly the US requires an act of Congress to authorize this sort of operation. Sidestepping congress underlines US's descent into totalitarianism and one of the very first acts crystalizing a dictatorship.

This president has clearly exposed the unarticulated parts of out laws which is supposed to make them work; The hope that the president will essentially act and interpret them in “good faith”

not doing so is approval of the change in the president's power to initiate and wage war unilaterally without congressional involvement

From what I gathered from OSINT types, they have breached the ventilation shafts above the centrifuge halls

IRGC isn’t a sovereign country, it’s a designated terrorist organization

You forgot that IRGC already directly attacked Israel twice in 2024 [1,2], and that’s not including countless proxy attacks and terrorist acts, culminating in October 7th massacres & atrocities

You got it wrong: IRGC attacked and Israel retaliated

US is just helped a little bit their ally

> This stuff isn't OK.

UN, ICC, ICG, etc. all became a $hit show, they don’t work. For 40 years IRGC threatened with Genocide of Jews, and they did nothing. Now when Jews retaliated: * This stuff isn't OK.* ;)

—-

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes...

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2024_Iranian_strikes_o...

or

De facto vs de jure

Pedantic rule-based systems are easy to circumvent with loopholes and lacunas. That’s why we should look at the substance and not merely a [legal] form

Examples:

- form: a cryptocurrency, but substance: an unregistered security

- “medical alcohol” during dry laws / Prohibition

- “medical marijuana” & patients vs drug users

- etc.

—-

Was Third Reich[1] a “sovereign government” or a front for The National Socialist German Workers' Party?

Was USSR a “sovereign government” or a front for a Communist Party?

Is Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) a “sovereign government” or merely a front for IRGC[2]?

And wasn’t Iran/Persia already a “sovereign government” before IRGC staged a coup d'état (aka “revolution”)?

—-

> "De facto" and "de jure" are Latin terms used to distinguish between what exists in reality and what is legally recognized. "De facto" refers to something that exists in practice or reality, even if not officially established or legally recognized. "De jure" refers to something that is legally recognized or officially established

——

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Revolutionary_Guard_...

In the first case, u have 2 more options: strike pre-emptively, or wait for them to strike & then retaliate

It doesn't matter what the entity is, it only matters whether they are enemy or not

——

> So China is not a sovereign state because it is a front for the CPP and can be bombed at will...?

I don't see the logical connection here. I never wrote that countries controlled by terrorist or authoritarian entities should be bombed at will. I wrote that some countries are highjacked by them, & if they attack or declare their intention to attack u, u may as well do it first

The key element is where the will of the people points - Milosevic was already unpopular and the bombing further united the people against him.

The few Iranians I know are against the regime, but I don't know how the wider picture looks.

Many of them still look at the Iran-Iraq war with a shade of Iranian patriotism (not sure there's a word to capture that actual feeling of sad memories of losing family members, coupled with a patriotic sense of duty).

The younger generation, not so much, since they didn't have to live through that hell.

A lot of Americans deeply oppose Trump, but how many of them would support a Chinese invasion with the express objective of overthrowing him and installing a new regime? I suspect very few, and instead you'd probably get a backlash of support for Trump.

my experience with Iranians I know are the same. the regime is not partitularly liked by the Iranians but they are no doubt united behind him now because (and for good reason) they likely believe whoever the israelis would appoint as the leader of Iran would be categorically worse.

Sounds pretty similar to the current situation to me.

Japan.

That's not to endorse any of these regimes, including the current Iranian one, just saying the variance is enormous around these events.

I'm wondering whether Trump knows that Iran won't give up and nevertheless pushes forward, or does he really believe that Iran can surrender? I think that's 99.99999% wrong belief. It feels like he is expressing it only to cover up his actions. He probably knows this will lead to a long-term escalation, but thinks that's the right thing to do for the interests of groups/countries he cares about.

If one were really concerned about the Iranians, the first thing they'd hope for is the containment of radiation not a revolution.

More to it, I've had personal experience with this brutal regime, they arrested my old cousin during the Mahsa Protests(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests), she was taken to the Evin prison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison) and was tortured for 6 months. We had no news from her. When she was finally released, she was so skinny that you could see her rib bones. We managed to bring her to Canada and it took her over a year of medical care until she began to recover. She was only 20.

No one hates this regime more than Iranians.

With all that out of the way, Iranians have no choice now but the defend their homes against hostile forces. They will not simply sit back and watch Israel and United States bomb their land to oblivion and then demand unconditional surrender.

This attack will inflict more pain on Iranians and only serves to grow the regime stronger.

We wanted a regime change, but not at the hands of Israel and US.

Honest question, do Iranians want foreign help for regime change? If so, what would be the nature of this help?

You've had decades to change the regime and you didn't do it. If not now, when?

Iran isn't actually a nation of pure evil, they are looking out for their own interests and on any given Sunday, are not particularly interested in starting a nuclear conflict. At the same time, understandably, their adversaries are not particularly interested in them having that option.

The risk is when they are backed into a corner where using a nuclear weapon increasingly makes sense. In this case, if you bomb Fordow and can completely eradicate the nuclear weapons, you do eliminate the immediate nuclear risk (though not without creating a slew of new problems to deal with). But, if you fail you have now backed them into a corner where this might become an increasingly reasonable option.

Either way the events of today are very likely to unfold in ways that forever change not only the dynamics of the middle east but global politics as a whole.

> Iran isn't actually a nation of pure evil, they are looking out for their own interests

Exactly. I do my best to consider them an "adversary", not an "enemy" for just that reason.

> The risk is when they are backed into a corner where using a nuclear weapon increasingly makes sense.

I'd argue there are two risks: one is that this puts Iran in a position where, if the regime survives, they will feel (and rightfully so) that the only way to secure their position is to possess them.

It also makes the same statement to other countries in similar positions.

I don't think we have a better option, sadly, but it is a consequence of this action.

Also, I don't think this makes a rational case for use. For possession, yes. For threatening to use them under certain conditions, yes - but the only rational use case for deploying nuclear weapons is if your opponent has already done the same. This became the case when the thermonuclear bomb was invented.

> I don't think we have a better option

I'd love help getting on board with this

If we fail, there's still the hope that other commenters here are right, and Iran isn't intent on using them offensively. If so, then Iran itself will be safe from this sort of attack.

... but it will also be clear to every other that the only way to be secure from Western military intervention is to possess nuclear weapons. There will be a precedent of a country acquiring them despite Western demands and surviving. This will lead to a world where proliferation is rampant, but not necessarily one where their use is no longer taboo as it is today.

Like North Korea?

And like Ukraine (conversely).

20 years is reasonable time to rebuild

If they managed to get enough of their HEU and any reactor spent fuel out of Fordo and elsewhere into locations we don't know about where they happen to have previously built backup facilities then they could have them very quickly. Hopefully a) they didn't build backup facilities, and b) didn't get a change to spirit away the materials w/o us noticing.

If commercial satellite photography can keep an eye on the movement of trucks in this area, it's probably safe to assume that spy satellites can too.

Turkey/Türkiye has been going the other direction. They're not totally off the reservation, but Erdogan isn't exactly in NATO's inner circle personally.

Which is why they likely were trying to possess them before and the US and Israel felt the need to strike

They will not stop, and they can't be negotiated with on this, again because they see it as a religious duty.

they use theology for political mandate and to further their goals. their goals are fundamentally opposed to israel's existence and go against america's interests in the region but they are geopolitical goals wrapped in theological wrapping paper, not mad ravings. no more than israel's "promised land" and america's "christian duty" are

this dehumanization is only going to lead to US boots on the ground and iran becoming an even worse vietnam/afghanistan. the US needs to bring iran down like the soviets were brought down; from the inside. this invading and sabre rattling hasnt worked before and wont work now

If you disagree can you help me understand the difference between these issues?

Every country in the world with well organized military is right now working on plans to acquire a nuclear arsenal either by proxy or by way of a domestic nuclear program. That is the legacy of this strike. It puts the point at the end of the exclamation that was Ukraine.

The seeds of a new era of proliferation have been sown, and our children will reap the rewards.

There are now ways to purify uranium much more cost effectively and in better secrecy that centrifuges. Small labs can do it effectively now, and a massively distributed effort would not only make it possible to achieve without needing to buy restricted equipment, it also would make it nearly impossible to disrupt militarily.

You could just open source a design and let the market do the work. It’s of course a terrible idea, which would lead to explosive proliferation and lots of cancer, but it would work. The technical part is challenging but not outside of the reach of serious hobby level efforts.

I will be surprised if we don’t start to see something along these lines cropping up all over the place soon. It’s a natural progression of several technologies that have become vastly more economical and accessible as time goes on.

Maybe, but the US and Israel also just demonstrated that Russian air defense assets (as employed in Iran) can be worthless.

The conflict does make me think the F35 might not be that bad. Granted who knows how Israel got air superiority?

But yeah, you’ve got a point. It’s great for general dynamics stock outlook. lol.

We've already seen that with North Korea and Libya. NK got to having them before we could stop them. Libya gave up its nuclear program (which is how we learned about Iran's), and we staged a revolution there and regime change.

I don’t wish for more nuclear weapons, but to date, the states with them, usually (a nice apply word) don’t use them.

Does that sound like someone who should have a nuclear arsenal?

That the US decides who can have them is darkly hilariously.

They just execute 1000 people a year for crimes like not wearing the propper hat. Or letting be raped.

The land, roads, ingress points, elevators, security, everything around here is now FUBAR. Okay so you didn't "destroy the bunker", but how many years until it's functional again?

The facility is beneath 80m of limestone which in the Qom formation is roughly equivalent to about 5000psi concrete.

Beneath the limestone, sits the facility itself which is encased in high performance concrete. So these bombs need to pen 80m of 5000psi material and then a unknown depth of high performance concrete.

And US military assets are often much more powerful than publicly advertised...

I know a bunch of armchair generals on here are speculating that this was ineffective, but time will tell.

Why do you believe that to be true?

Military: We can penetrate up to 200 feet with this new bunker buster bomb that we spent a billion dollars on…specifically for this site and some sites in North Korea.

Enemy: Build the bunker at 300 feet, I hear their best bunker buster is only effective to 200 feet.

Military: Damn, foiled again!

Not saying you're wrong, but... source?

And, if so, where was it moved to?

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-858619

Didn't Netanyahu perjure himself to congress about iraq's wmds two decades? Isn't that grounds for arrest? It's amazing how our media never mentions that netanyahu is a habitual liar when they push netanyahu's iran's wmds spiel.

At this point our media companies are israel's PR department. Fox news should be banned like RT for being a foreign mouthpiece.

It was with this backdrop that the "Iraq has WMDs" campaign managed to get traction. If you learn history and pay attention to the events, you'll quickly understand that Saddam's antagonism and mockery of the whole UN institution, specially when they self-isolated, was an easy sell even with weak evidence.

Making this out to be a simple matter exclusively and bounded to the existence of WMDs is naive and outright ignorant.

- Saddam factually didn’t have WMD to use,

- If he had, they were not powerful anyway,

- Not a reason for groundbreaking safekeeping invasion,

- We all know it was a matter of petrol, not humanitarian causes.

I’m literally all ok with invasions caused by power struggles; I’m not ok with lying. Colin Powell lied and the UN Security Council validated,

…proving the UNSC is a shitbag, and irremediable, hopeless, handicapped pile of corrupt officials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...

> U.S.-led inspections later found that Iraq had ceased active WMD production and stockpiling.

The article says an awful lot more, such as pointing out the fact that Saddam's regime not only ran WMD development programmes for decades but also had a long and verified track record of using them in military engagements and even against civilians.

The article also points out the fact that once Saddam's regime was defeated in it's botched attempt at invading and annexing Kuwait, it rejected and outright antagonized the UN's programme that foresaw terminating Saddam's WMD programmes.

Trying to spin the issue as a simplistic "they had no WMDs" is ignorant to the point of being nearly disingenuous. You need to ignore everything and the whole history to make such a simplistic and superficial observation.

It's not s problem at all. It's actually the whole point.

Following Saddam's botched invasion of Kuwait, the regime was ordered to destroy it's WMD stockpile. The UN was mandated to foresee Saddam's WMD programmes were destroyed. Saddam spent the following years outright preventing the UN to do any form of verification, and went to the extent of outright antagonizing them.

So you reach a point where a totalitarian regime with a long and proven track record of developing and using WMDs refuses to show it got rid of it's WMDs. How can you tell if they still have it if they actively prevent the UN from checking?

You instead receive intel that suggests Saddam is indeed not only stockpiling WMDs but also actively developing them.

Do you think it's unreasonable to enforce the decision?

It's tempting to look back and take the simplistic and ignorant path of saying "there were no WMDs". This however denies all facts and state of affairs. In fact, the whole WMD talk is a red herring.

It was ginned up BS that led to the worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years, directly creating ISIS, deaths of 500k Iraqis and kicking off the migrant crisis.

> It was ginned up BS

This is just not true. You can view the documents on wikileaks and other organizations.

> that led to the worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years, directly creating ISIS, deaths of 500k Iraqis and kicking off the migrant crisis.

Perhaps, but completely irrelevant to whether or not they had WMD.

I don't get why people who are on the right side of this refuse to admit this.

What are these documents you are referring to?

Some of the chemicals qualified as WMD. Almost none of them were properly stored and weren't usable, but a little bit were usable.

Also, I'm not making the claim they were trying to make new ones, just that they had some.

It was about ongoing programs, including a whole bunch of horse droppings about yellowcake uranium enrichment.

Pedantically saying but there were some old shells of gas misses the entire point.

The US ginned up a war on false pretenses, leading to millions dying.

Your um actually on some trivia ain't helpful or interesting

I don't get why people who are so opposed to the war are the ones who can't admit they actually did have WMD. Making these false claims just makes it look like we, who were opposed to the war, are the liars.

It would be like the FBI saying they raided the world's biggest drug lord, and the only thing they found was a little bit of shake in a backpack in his garage.

You pedantically "but they did find drugs!"

You forget that it is also US state media. Republicans would be banning their own version of RT.

You can believe Fox News is the worst entity in human history, but Fox News is not RT.

[0] https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2019/04/five-...

Maybe, but worth saying the ICC have issued a warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes. The reason he hasn't been arrested is:

- The ICC is just a court, not a police department. Only countries have those, and while Netanyahu is in Israel, his own police probably won't arrest him.

- Authoritarian governments like Trump, Orban, Putin are actively undermining the ICC, which makes enforcement even less likely.

It's not just a Trump thing.

In 2002 on the heels of 9/11 George W Bush signed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_... into law, also known as Hague Invasion Act, specifically acknowledging the ICC in the clearest of ways.

How is that relevant? Is an elected judiciary demonstrably more objective at interpreting law?

Seriously, though. There are thousands of tin-pot dictators who would love to remake the world in their image. None of them have the ability to do so, including Iran. What makes this one special? Other than it being a very convenient target in a news cycle with some very inconvenient stories?

then again if your username is accurate, there's no point

What justifies this?

With these strikes, it seems more like Israel has ample intelligence on the US government than it has on the Middle East, since even DNI concurred that there was no proof of WMDs.

Let's conservatively assume a terminal velocity (v) of 400 m/s (approximately 895 mph).

Calculating Kinetic Energy (KE):

The formula for kinetic energy is:

KE = 0.5 * m * v²

Plugging in our values:

KE = 0.5 * 13,600 kg * (400 m/s)²

KE = 0.5 * 13,600 kg * 160,000 m²/s²

KE ≈ 1.088 billion Joules

This is an enormous amount of energy that must be absorbed by the ground to stop the bomb.

---

Resistive Force of Soil (60m penetration estimation):

To simplify, we can use empirical formulas developed from extensive testing. One of the most well-known is Young's empirical formula, which provides a way to estimate penetration depth based on the projectile's characteristics and the soil's properties.

resistive force is as a pressure (force per unit area) acting on the front of the MOP. Let's call this the dynamic soil resistance. The total resistive force (F) would be this pressure multiplied by the cross-sectional area (A) of the bomb.

The cross-sectional area of the MOP (with a diameter of 0.8 m) is

A = π * (radius)² = π * (0.4 m)² ≈ 0.5 m²

---

Calculating Penetration Depth (d):

The work done (W) by the soil to stop the bomb is:

W = F * d

Setting the initial kinetic energy equal to the work done:

KE = F * d

Therefore, the penetration depth is:

d = KE / F

To achieve a 60-meter penetration, the average resistive force would have to be:

F = 1,088,000,000 J / 60 m

F ≈ 18,133,333 Newtons

This is equivalent to a force of over 4 million pounds. While this seems immense, it's plausible given the energies involved.

---

Now, we can calculate the resistive force:

Convert PSI to Pascals (Newtons per square meter):

15,000 psi(assuming) × 6,895 Pa/psi ≈ 103.4 Million Pascals (MPa)

Calculate the MOP's Cross-Sectional Area:

Diameter = 31.5 inches (0.8 meters)

Radius = 0.4 meters

Area (A) = π × (radius)² = π × (0.4 m)² ≈ 0.503 m²

Calculate the Total Resistive Force (F):

Force = Pressure × Area

F = 103,400,000 N/m² × 0.503 m²

F ≈ 52 Million Newtons

So we see that 18 Million Newtons is not enough and the bomb would have to be significantly supersonic, or my calculations are too conservative, or they are overestimating the 60m soil penetration, but we ARE in the same ballpark.

---

now, you might ask how can an object achieve over 1 Mach terminal velocity?

At high altitudes (like 30,000-50,000 feet): The air is much colder and less dense. For instance, at 35,000 feet, the temperature can be around -54°C, and the speed of sound drops to about 295 m/s (about 660 mph).

In this high-altitude, low-density environment, the MOP's terminal velocity is incredibly high. It can easily accelerate past the local speed of sound (which is already lower due to the cold) and go supersonic, then slowing down when near ground.

The bomb is also likely designed like a super aerodynamic dart to achieve maximum terminal velocity.

It does seem like we're nearing the limit of what can be done with aircraft though. The challenge of hitting the ground much harder seems to be greater than just digging your facility a little deeper (that said, I've nevler dug a hole that deep either so perhaps I'm wrong about that also).

We're working on it, 10-20 more years of legal proceedings and it's done.

The GBU-57 is dope. Really curious to see how well it worked here

https://disarmament.unoda.org/wmd/nuclear/npt/

The first bunker-buster :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_bomb

"According to an anecdote, the idea arose after a group of Royal Navy officers saw a similar, but fictional, bomb depicted in the 1943 Walt Disney animated propaganda film Victory Through Air Power,[Note 10] and the name Disney was consequently given to the weapon."

If they built the facility out of 30,000psi concrete, they'd be lucky to pen 4 meters with a direct hit, nevermind the 80m of limestone above it.

[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/23528/irans-stockpile-of--low...

But Iran also contains reformers, and the deal was a bet that if you do good diplomacy you can reduce the power and influence of the shit-stirrers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...

The relief of sanctions enabled Iran to fund their other activities in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. It also enable the regime to invest in other weapons programs including weapons Iran has been supplying to Russia and those it and its proxies are launching against Israel.

I'm not sure Trump withdrawal from that deal was the best idea but the deal wasn't great either.

"The thing that prevented them from achieving a nuclear weapon didn't also prevent them from funding x y z other far less problematic things that can be far more easily handled through conventional diplomacy and military action"

Seriously?

The core issue to the most of the world is nuclear proliferation, not low level terrorism and militia groups.

As for the facts, and not just the narrative: 60% enrichment is not considered weapons-grade enrichment, and it is not illegal under the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). Therefore, today's attack is an illegal act of aggression against another country, violating international law. Those are the facts.

That's what Iran state media says. Has anyone else said this?

This is why I think the most likely scenario is that Israel will commit to regime change. Israel can't trust the current regime to not race to a nuclear weapon at this stage, and Israel can never be over 99% certain that a clandestine effort isn't being done outside of the current understanding of intelligence. "Assume the worst" seems to be a doctrine they adhere to.

The problem is that the US government appear to support them in whatever craziness they aim for. That's the part that makes this a lot more problematic.

Happened with Japan in WW2, too, although that was a surrender rather than bottom up. But still a form of regime change. There are many ways it could play out.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

…

> 60% enrichment is not considered weapons-grade enrichment.

So which is it?

1. They already have enriched uranium and can just make a bomb now

2. They don’t have weapons-grade enriched uranium (and now probably cannot enrich it)

Whether they had the theoretical ability to complete enrichment or not last week, does not matter, because they likely do not have it now.

Did you have to add that qualifier because otherwise there's at least one other nuclear power in Middle East that regularly bombs civilians.

The US posturing against Iran dates back to the Cold War era when Iran was tagged as “northern tier” state, and any nationalist moves inside looked like a Soviet opening, and a threat to the Anglo stronghold of Iran's Oil.

Christians, Jews and Muslims are monotheistic and all claim to be the religion of the One God, yes.

But the Jews rejected the God the Christians believe in, and the Muslims describe/portray a god that is absolutely incompatible with the Christian God.

So essentially no, they can't possibly all believe in the same God.

We couldn’t stop North Korea with threats of violence but we did manage to stop Iran for almost 50 years through diplomacy. That’s all pissed down the drain now.

Yes, we stopped them. How many nuclear weapons does Iran possess today? 0? Despite having a vast, VAST head start on North Korea - like decades worth of experience and capabilities. The ONLY reason they don't have one today is the diplomacy that convinced them to not move forward faster.

>How many countries don’t have nukes that aren’t being invaded. Canada, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica etc.

I think my favorite part is when the first country on your list is one who has been threatened repeatedly by the current US administration.

What exactly do you think Canada is going to do should Trump decide to follow-through on his threats of making them the 51st state? Make some strongly worded notices of condemnation with the UN while Ottawa is being razed?

Costa Rica has nothing anybody wants. If the US tomorrow declared they are no longer protecting Japan, they would likley find themselves invaded by Japan before the end of the year. The only reason Italy is safe is because they're part of the EU, and the EU has... you guessed it... access to nuclear weapons.

Yet, if they had moved faster, force would've been used to stop them earlier.

If force alone could stop a nuclear program, why does North Korea have bombs? Many nations could have attacked them without any concerns of recourse for decades.

Ukraine gave up its nukes to Russia after the collapse of the USSR with a treaty-promise that Russia will never be an aggressor.

Iran has now been bombed into regime change for trying to even get to that point.

If there's one thing every 2-bit aspiring dictator now knows, it's the only way to protect yourself is to get nukes.

This wasn't a non-proliferation enforcement action, this was the nail in the coffin of all future non-proliferation efforts.

Now we have regime change and Libya is a paradise. /s

One of the problems with all of this is we may hate the government, but in getting rid of it we don't get anything better.

North Korea is poised to level Seoul with conventional rocket artillery. A military solution has never been an option. Threats of violence in Korea are transparent.

They have consistently and openly threatened US leaders.

There was no diplomacy here.

"The last 50 years", you say? Oh, so right around the time when the US and Britain overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister to install a religious nutcase, because that nutcase would agree to sell them oil at a better price?

No, can't imagine that causing any bitterness.

We reaped what we sowed with Iran.

When people are mixing up basic facts like this you know the mainstream's knowledge of Iran is heavily propagandized. Really would help if people actually read a history textbook for once instead of believing everything they hear from someone else.

It's a weird one. I don't disagree with your post, still, what is "approved" nukes? A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them. Then Israel also got them, also "unauthorized", but countries who don't mind pretend they don't know.

In the end there is no authorized and unauthorized nukes, only a calculus of power.

1. Check this list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we...

2. Cross out the countries which are attacked for having nuclear weapons.

Here's your definition of approved nukes.

Russia attacked ukraine because they didn't. Iran got attacked because it didn't. North korea isnt attacked because they have. That's the moral of the story.

It's "make nukes first, ask questions later"

How do you explain India vs Pakistan?

I mean israel gets attacked even though they have nukes, but some rockets are not the same as a regime-changing war

Your original point was that nukes prevented attacks. India vs Pakistan rejects your hypothesis.

You then proceeded to move the goalpost from "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" to "yeah countries with nukes get attacked, but attacks don't escalate" which is also an absurd argument to make.

It's a particularly silly point to make in light of India Vs Pakistan because it was described as an electoral stunt to save face, which means nuclear nations still attack themselves even for the flimsiest reasons.

It's not. the world is not a binary system to make simplistic black/white arguments. Nukes certainly act as deterrent for escalating a war. yes , attacks will exist , but we are not escalating with russia for a reason. you are being pedantic , but the argument for deterrence still stands strong.

I agree, simplistic comments on the line of "$(country_without_nukes) got attacked because it didn't [had nukes]" are silly and don't pass the smell test. Don't you agree?

If you enter into a scenario against a nuclear opponent where they go nuclear (which you going nuclear would certainly do) then you may well defeat them, but they're simultaneously also defeat you. This is a big part of the reason that Russia is so paranoid about the US surrounding it with military bases. The only possible way to treat to sidestep this problem is with a massive decapitation strike where you try to nuke your enemy into oblivion before they have any chance to respond with their own nukes. Realistically, it's probably impossible, but but it remains the Achille's Heel of MAD / mutually assured destruction. And drones/internal strike issues are certainly going to be causing some consternation.

Well, there's also missile defense, but I think that's a dead end. We're talking about the offensive goal being to shoot a bullet at the side of a massive barn, and the defensive goal being to shoot down that bullet. It seems impossible to imagine a state of technology between near peers where the latter becomes easier than the former.

But let me put it in familiar worlds from pop culture:

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

(Because Iran doesn't have nukes, it's currently being forced into playing and making losing moves.)

What I’m saying precisely is that quite often things will appear to be one way for a long time even if the underlying premise is wrong. E.g. the chicken who thinks the farmer is nice because the farmer feeds, houses, and provides safety until the inevitable untimely end for the chicken.

Similar situations which are assumed to be impossible have risks pushed right up to the edge until it becomes inevitable. Sure Pakistan and India narrowly averted this time but what if they didn’t. Take for example the concept that US housing market couldn’t crash simultaneously across the US, this enabled cheap debt which pushed the market to the edge until one day it went over the edge.

There is additionally the problem of victory disease, it looks like you’re winning right up until you fail.

There is a survivability bias, we wouldn’t be discussing the viability of MAD had it not worked out thus far.

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon they’ll be able to avoid being invaded while being able to constantly needle Israel, to the point the survival of Israel would be at stake. Similar to how Israel is needling Iran now but with proxies. At that point Israel must make a choice, peacefully collapse or escalate and I’m confident they’ll escalate. I don’t think it’s a question of if but a question of when, once the threshold has been crossed the once unthinkable becomes routine.

Additionally the inaction of a strong adversary is often seen incorrectly as sign of weakness, but it is the cornered rats that lashes out. We can cross Russia’s and Chinas red lines all day every day, right up until they think they’re a cornered rat and then we can’t. How confident can we really be that we know exactly where that limit is. Because the bellicose are more often promoted the people marking these assessments are more likely to have an overly optimistic on the location of that limit. It appears to me China and Russia have a wait and see approach to the US which appears to be in terminal decline, and yet again the west is taking that as a sign of weakness.

When you have morons in charge not even MAD can save you.

What was this, then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_co...

ukraine is what a war looks like when both parties dont have nukes

Looking at india pakistan, and ukraine russia, its clear whether you should give your nuclear arsenal up or not

This seems analogous to the idea that every household should have guns if they want to be safe.

And furthermore most gun crime is committed by people who do not legally own the firearm being used. [2] I'm loathe to link to that site, but this is an issue that is poorly reported and so it requires exploring a web of data sources, which they actually competently do, on this issue at least.

You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.

[1] - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

[2] - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/12/john-faso/...

You should take a refresher on statistics and the difference between correlated and causative

And why a divorced guy living in his house be an issue with your friends or neighbors?

Why is “divorced” relevant. Maybe he should be the one worried about NIMBYs.

I made a profile of a person that fits the profile of somebody that might be a little angry at society. Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.

For what its worth, there are plenty of guys I know who are divorced, and it was probably the right decision, and they're great people. Most marriages end that way, in fact. It doesn't mean the "divorced jaded man who lost his social place in the world, struggles to find kindness or peers, and lashes out" is a stock character that will go away. It's a real problem

Oh god… please fix me.

Anyways it read to me like an obvious generalization. My bad if you weren’t. After all, some of your best friends are “x”.

Problem is it is impossible to combine: - responsible storage of firearms - immediate availability of firearms anywhere at home when faced with hostility

Also most gun violence is domestic so having firearms at home do not solve a problem but creates it.

Curiosity is the number one problem with kids and guns, and that's because we hide them behind a mystique and don't make them understand. But talk to any redneck kid, and guns aren't a big deal, because they've had the mystique removed through education and familiarity.

Also people can be responsible for years until they aren't. As much as you believe you couldn't hurt someone you love, there is no way you (pr anyone else) can be 100% sure that reality will never change. If there was a way to know, people would be stopped or would surrender their weapons before they commit crimes.

That said: lock up your guns. Your mid will probably survive a stove burn.

In most case, it is the same countries that give adequate training to their cops, a not-so-surprising correlation.

When it's rare, then it's easy and reasonable to take a highly idealistic approach. When it's frequent you have to deal with uncomfortable practical issues like whether an officer should prioritize your survival, or their own. There's a line where heroics turn into suicidality, and that's largely driven by frequency.

We’ve seen the footage of the police brutalizing peaceful protestors beating them with clubs, riding over them repeatedly with horses.

The police in this country are woefully undertrained compared to the rest of the industrialized nations.

It takes more time and training to be certified as a hairdresser in most parts of the US than it does a cop.

What is "the police" on the level of countries? There is no majority that agrees that, e. g., the NATO can serve as the police. It feels like on this level, we live in an anarchy with only very few actors who don't really want to live together. So maybe nukes are an option, although I don't like it.

You're naive. The police (or whatever you call it) is meant for inward force projection of the state. Your security is not the main concern.

Besides the police works too slowly to truly protect you when SHTF. Sometimes even a minute or two is the difference between you being alive or dead.

This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home. I'm countries with virtually no private ownership of guns, it is extraordinarily unlikely to be in life threatening danger in your home.

> This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home

Citation needed, because I highly doubt you're correct.

Conversely, if people with guns think there's a decent chance you have a gun too, they'll be terrified of any move you make and have a high chance of misinterpreting any gesture you make into violence. So there is much higher tension.

Of course, there is a possibility that you're being attacked by a crazed murderer - in which case you're probably going to die either way. But this happens vastly, vastly less often that robbery.

You can take a look at crime stats from even the poorest European countries. The proof that lack of gun ownership in no way causes more violent crime is evident. Everything I just added above is an explanation of why this happens, but the fact it happens is not up for debate.

I was once involved with a project that returned determination of land ownership from people's physical custody to the courts and the resulting drops in assault and homicide rates (for the entire country) was in the double digits over a period of months.

If you re-read what I've wrote carefully you can observe I didn't refer once to my lived experience.

A safe community isn’t one where people are held in check by police. People are not roving around thinking “oh I’d break and enter and murder and rape but for the fact a police officer might shoot me.”

People in such a community lack guns but they do have things like a working public health system, decent education, daily encounters with other people that are positive and so on.

The threat of police shootings is not what makes a safe society safe.

Constructive, open and fair trade is the equivalent at an international level. Cooperative and trusting. Not staring down the barrel of each other’s guns.

Except this isn't borne out in the data. Look at deeply conservative places where guns are literally everywhere, and you'll see very low crime rates compared to cities with strict gun control.

And why? Well, as a criminal, I'd be loathe to try something when there's a good chance the victim is armed.

In your perfect community scenario, a single armed criminal would wreak havoc, completely unopposed.

[1] - https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...

Although on this topic I'd also add that urban areas have a similar issue. Criminals know that the overwhelming majority of crime goes unpunished, while people have a reality deluded by shows like CSI. Homicides, for instance, have the highest clearance rate, by far. And it's 47.5%. [1] Vehicular theft has the worst at 6.6%. If you end up with your window busted out and everything that's not strapped down stolen, there's no real point reporting it to the police unless necessary for an insurance claim because you're never getting that stuff back, and the thief is never getting caught.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearance_rate#In_the_United_S...

Why do Canada and Europe have dramatically lower violent crime rates despite having a mostly unarmed population?

Grew up rural Alberta with rifles around the house all the time, in plain view. For shooting game. Not a word was ever uttered about "defending ourselves" with guns... From who?

Hell, we left our door unlocked when we left the house unless it was overnight.

Good grief. Nothing is sadder than people valorizing social/cultural breakdown.

"Peace, order, and good government."

I don't lock my house or my car habitually, never had a problem, never felt the need to keep a weapon either, but I know plenty of people that live in the city that have been robbed or assaulted and do feel the need to carry though. I can't really blame them for not relying on police.

Source: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.3040...

That's also not necessarily the point I'm making. Suppose you are in a society where a small part of people are bad actors, for whatever reason. They will break and enter, murder, and rape. You want to protect the rest of the society against these bad actors. You can now equip everyone with weapons so they may defend themselves. That also enables the bad actors to use said weapons because we don't know who really know who is a bad actor (at least not the ones that didn't commit any crimes yet). Or you give weapons only to a small part of society, where you enforce strict gun laws.

The alternative is to reduce the number of bad actors and this is, in part, fulfilled by the conditions that you are describing. But how do I reduce the number of state leaders that are willing to shoot each other? I guess it's what you are saying, namely constructive, open, and fair trade. But we're not really making progress in that direction it seems.

Turns out, making yourself a more dangerous target works to an extent.

> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

You know because it’s hard to make a case about being a country of rights, due process, law and order if you don’t extend that to the people within it’s borders.

The blue cities are enforcing the Constitution as sanctuary cities are legal laws of those states. The red states and federal government are violating it.

There’s a supremacy clause, and it’s quite clear.

That's a lie. They broke the law when they entered the country illegally. Then some of them committed more crimes.

Just like you don't need a judge to determine if someone drives without a driver's license.

The states don’t have any sovereignty to make their own decisions about immigration.

Putting aside ICE tactics, if their immigration status is not legal, then by definition they are not law abiding citizens.

Unless you are privy the status of any planned or ongoing ICE operations against criminals, you have no idea what they are doing in that regard.

Law enforcement at all levels needs checks along with better direction in carrying out their duties. However, allowing people to continue living in an immigration limbo is not a solution. Sanctuary cities leave illegal immigrants unprotected.

There are plenty of guns in LA, and any ICE agent or cop would be dumb to assume those they are arresting are unarmed because “it’s against the law”.

The red cities don’t have sanctuary city rules in place, so local law enforcement helps ICE and the arrests don’t make the news.

Going with your analogy, this would be the same as if police basically ignored all home invasion/trespassing laws such that the only houses that criminals entered were in fact those of undefended home owners. In this scenario, it would be demonstrated, by this policy, that yes home owners need to own guns to be safe.

To your point, if you don't want a world where it's safer for home owners to own guns, than you need to ensure there are policies in place to create a world where that was true. The lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that, if you don't have nuclear weapons, your sovereignty is always at the mercy of nations that do.

A world where every country needs nuclear weapons to remain sovereign is similarly undesirable (on a larger scale) to a country where every home needs to have guns to be safe. However we're on a path with nuclear weapons where that is unfortunately not the reality we are creating.

Relations between sovereign states are fundamentally anarchic. There are no world police. The UN and other international institutions have little or no real power, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty is only enforceable through kinetic action by other countries when it suits their interests.

Second strike weapons are in some ways a holdover from Cold War strategic thinking which it's sort of acknowledged probably overestimated the penchant of any side to engage in a first strike.

The practical reality of nuclear war planning has generally been that no one will accept even a single city-buster landing - and no first strike option is really reliable enough to guarantee you didn't miss one.

So achieving monopoly on violence first. Which requires forcefully disarming all opposition just like what is happening right now. Is the Sovereign hypocritical because they arrest and potential kill people they don't like but they do not others to do so? According to many mainstream political theories, not neccessairly so.

The matter of fact is that if a major power really wants to destroy a smaller power, there's nothing a smaller power can do even if they develop a handful of nukes, especially at the cost of their economy. Much better just to work diplomatically with said major powers so that interests are aligned rather than demanding a absolute respect for sovereignity which does not exist in reality. So then the question is, why can the Shah or the Gulf States work with Israel and America, but not the Islamic Regime? Even worse so, it's one to turn a cold shoulder that America or Israel wouldn't care much, but to actively fund proxies that destabilize other allies is just warranting a response.

But if law enforcement is not only not doing their job but actively threatening you: well, I guess 2A won this time.

The differences are so extreme it's a waste of time to discuss the analogy further.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_re...

Before this there was every reason to doubt Israel's claims, which they've been making for 30 years, about Iran imminently having a nuclear weapon. But at this point there's a practically 100% certainty that they will be aiming to create nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

Let's hope NATO doesn't get compromised, else I see 30 new nuclear programs starting soon.

We all hooray (well, some of us) the "good" countries having nukes, to bring peace and stability. But it only takes one funky election to get a crazy person in charge of such "good" nukes. And if you 10x the number of nuclear powers, that's 10x more shots at that.

Also, you probably mean "unleash".

I do disagree with your premise that Gaddafi’s death was a natural consequence of the Western intervention. Whilst watching the events unfold at the time, I’d say he would be ousted and killed irrespectively of any intervention — either by the populace or by the various factions vying for power.

I don't intend this as a drive-by zinger, far from it, but I think you're being hopelessly optimistic. Every country with the science and engineering muscle to make it happen will be pursuing a nuclear program. NATO, former Warsaw Pact, some assholes who managed to cobble together a broadly recognized country by virtue of force of will, you name it. They're all going to be seeking to create nuclear weapons.

Seoul is in artillery range of the border.

Regarding guns: if you have easy access to weapons, everyone also has access, so the Nash equilibrium is "get a weapon". If weapons circulation is restricted, the Nash equilibrium is "don't waste your money on weapons".

I think a part of the reason North Korea plays crazy is because they have to. If the US didn't think they'd push the big red button, then we'd invade them in a heart-beat. Mutually assured destruction only works when you believe the other guy will push the button. So you need the bomb and then you also need to make sure everybody thinks you're willing to actually use it.

North Korea has enough conventional rocket artillery within range of Seoul to level the city. This is how Kim was able to run his nuclear program to completion in the first place. It also hasn't changed.

(Probably the risk to S. Korea, and the risk of pulling China into a war.)

Iraq also attacked an allegedly nuclear capable Israel without fear of a nuclear reprisal.

Please give dates, locations, and number of casualties. Iran has made many aggressive statements and funded and armed Palestinian resistance organizations, but actual conflict between Israel and Iran has been mostly clandestine and not officially acknowledged, with a few exceptions where Israel and the US unilaterally attack Iran.

More recent events show that it doesn't matter. India-Pakistan endless fight.

And Ukraine. Imagine they had nukes in 2022 and russian army advances. Should they nuke russian cities? It would not stop troops and give them more motivation to fight, to revenge. Should they nuke russian troops? To many nukes need for such large frontline.

The only nuclear weapons Ukraine would need is enough to reliably ensure Moscow and St Petersburg cease existing.

Do you really think the US would trade Washington and New York for a chunk of Mexico?

Like...that's the whole point of MAD. You might as well ask "well why didn't the US and Soviet Union go to war? Obviously they won't launch..."

The entire point of a nuclear deterrent is it stops people asking those sorts of questions, because ultimately it's a gamble. The only guarantee you get is "don't invade my territory and I won't launch". As soon as you start not doing that, you get to ask if you think it's a 1% chance, or a 2% chance, or or or... You get to find out when your capital and most populous city do or do not explode. And you get to roll those dice over and over again.

However, we don't live in a reasonable world, so I suspect the first step will be, as much as I don't want it, World War III.

If it wasn’t the US as the world’s leading power, but rather China, the list of countries forced to give up nuclear programs would be entirely different.

I’m not against trying to limit nuclear proliferation, but trying to paint it as some democratic legal process is naive.

The US loves to use the UN as cover for their own strategic goals, but happy to ignore the UN if it benefits them. Same with those talking nuclear non-proliferation.

Invasion of Afghanistan only happened after diplomatic efforts to get the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden. Iraq invasion was pushed through UN. Likewise, the Balkan war in 1990s was UN-sanctioned.

This? I mean, never mind the question of nukes, I don't think anyone declared war. Iran is a buffet of pick-your-own-target, in the middle of a negotiation that was supposed to end the nuclear program peacefully. I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it. It's a step back from a world, where at least in theory we were supposed to stay within the frameworks of principle-based laws.

You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it. Maybe. But I'd like to think it set a limit to how far they can bend it. Now? I'm not so sure.

Well, Iran has been funding armies to the tune of millions (billions?) of dollars to attack Israel, as well as funding multiple terror attacks against Jews and against the US for many years.

So, alternative view - the fact that Iran has been allowed to do this, while the entire time stating quite clearly that they intend to destroy another sovereign country, while at the same time develop most of what they need for nukes - the fact that they've been allowed to do all this is actually proof that countries can do whatever they want and get away with it. And stopping their program is actually a way to show that countries can't just get away with it.

I'd love to see a UN resolution calling for the dismantling for this terrorist network. Or if not that, at least some kind of multilateral, or even hell, unilateral declaration on this - "end this or else". But no, it's a western style drive-by shooting. It just so happens the guy who got shot is a baddie.

It also flies in the face of anyone with general knowledge:

Two of Iran's main proxies are Hamas, that has been shooting rockets at Israel for the last 15 years, and launched a major invasion planned (in their mind) to destroy Israel?

And Hezbollah, which fought multiple wars with Israel, also launched hundreds of rockets at Israel since the Gaza war began, and had thousands of rockets aimed at Israel, as well as tens of thousand of ground troops hidden in caves and tunnels on the border of Israel, with plans to launch an invasion into Israel?

This is all on top of the Iranian regime saying over and over again that one of their goals is to destroy Israel?

The Iran-Iraq war was the first one, with Iraq funded and supported by the Gulf states.

Supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is strategic in this context. The Saudi regime wants rapprochement with Israel and to remain aligned with US interests. But neither of these are remotely popular in the Saudi population. By funding guerrilla warfare against Israel, Iran and to a lesser extent Qatar, keeps the Sauds discredited and unpopular among at home and in other Arab countries. The same applies to Egypt, another regional rival of Iran, whose government have never been off the defensive with the Egyptian people and wider Arab opinion since normalisation with Israel.

Obviously Hamas and Hezbollah themselves are only interested in fighting Israel and not the wider regional conflicts. But Iran itself uses that conflict, quite cynically, for wider geopolitical goals. Its stance is the reason that, from Afghanistan to Turkey to Tunisia, it can always find allies who want to challenge the Gulf states vision for the Middle East. Iran supplies the weapons and the know how, but there's never a shortage of locals to drive the car bombs.

There is an interpretation of Iran's behaviour which sees it as a source of Muslim pride for standing up to imperialism, and suggests in contrast that the Saudi leaders are too decadent, too corrupt, and bring shame by ignoring injustice and exploitation done to Arabs. I would certainly question this, but it's not an unpopular discourse in Saudi and other Arab countries.

If you have never come across the idea of the conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine etc being part of a long game of proxy war and influence between Iran and Saudi, I would question how broad your sources of analysis are.

Still, I think you (or austin-cheney) go way too far in seemingly completely dismissing the idea that the proxies are to fight Israel. Yes, there are a lot of larger strategic implications here, and yes, this is sometimes seen as part of Iran positioning itself as the leader of the Muslim nation that will restore honor to Islam, etc.

But "Israel just happened to be there and frequently get in the way when not directly intervening." doesn't make much sense, given the consistent statements of Iran for the last 40 years, given the fact that they're pouring so much of this funding into Hamas and Hezbollah which, as you say, are only interested in fighting Israel themselves.

(Btw, in some sense, Israel is probably the most powerful regional power in the Middle East.)

In any case, none of this makes my original point "nonsense". The point that it's Iran that's disrupting the rules-based order, not the US, still stands, even if the proxy wars were not "really" to destroy Israel (most evidence to the contrary) and even if it's only funding these proxies which have spread terror and war in the region to try and destabilize Saudi Arabia.

Would you at least agree that yours is at the very least far from a mainstream opinion? I feel like you at least need to back it up with some evidence given that.

For the record, I have no formal expertise in anything related to this. I do live in Israel, have been living through the bombing campaigns, invasions etc of Iran's proxies for most of my life. The country that just "happened to be in the way".

Except in the case of Hezbollah (first Google result for "why was Hezbollah founded": "Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to fight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon."). And except in the case of Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, on the border of Israel. This is the first time I've ever heard Hamas referred to as not mainly having to do with Israel, but with Saudi Arabia.

(In any case, differences in opinion aside, thank you for your service!)

So, are you saying the US must go war with Iran now because Hezbollah was founded 43 years ago and does not like Israel?

You are doing a really bad job of presenting anything coherent.

No, I didn't say that, and I'm not sure why you're switching to talk about this.

I was specifically refuting this idea from the GP of this thread:

> Sort of. I think there was an effort to put a rules-based framework, still skewed towards the "great powers", but a framework nonetheless.

This and other parts of that comment implied that, up until now, there was a rules-based order, but this attack somehow goes against that.

I was pointing out that this doesn't make much sense to me, because Iran has been breaking that rules-based order for years and getting away with it. Saying that enforcing the order is the problem, and not the attempt to circumvent it, is IMO incorrect.

You're free to correct me on that idea if you disagree, it's certainly a debatable opinion. But the only thing you disagreed with me on (or at least the thing you called out) was that Iran wasn't funding proxies against Israel, it was to contain Saudi Arabia. That, unlike my alternative view of what the war signifies, is something that is at odds with reality.

No.

Your parent is figuratively flying in the face of …

I have five figures of karma with which to fight this battle…

Hezbollah is not Iran. Israel has gone to war with Hezbollah in the past completely without military intervention from Iran.

Well, sort of. They tried, but when the UN gave an answer that the US and UK didn't like, they went ahead anyway.

> You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it.

I'm not quite cynical enough to wholly agree with that, but given enough motivation and power the façade does crack pretty easily.

Democracy doesn't really work when people think the US invaded Vietnam attacked they attacked us, that the US invaded Iraq because they have or are building WMD, that we invaded Libya to "liberate" it, and so on. And as for Iran, here's [2] a montage of Netanyahu claiming Iran will imminently have nuclear weapons, and so they should be invaded. The claims started 30 years ago and generally had a timeline of 1-3 years at most.

If the justifications for wars were more honest, even if that entails completely dropping the facade of morality, it'd have enabled populations within countries to have a better understanding of how the world "really" works, and also to make better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzmtdwsef8s

I recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/United-Nations-History-Stanley-Meisle...

The UN isn't working very well right now, but it's worked considerably better in the past. In the wake of WW2, I think there was a genuine sentiment that war was really horrible and it should be avoided at all costs. Sadly most of the people who saw WW2 have passed away by this point.

In terms of populations "making better decisions on the sorts of foreign policy views to support" -- I think international law is, if anything, helpful in this regard. Foreign policy is complex, and human nature is such that people are always predisposed to see their own interests as just, or at least cloak their interests in the language of justice. On the other hand, total pacifism is also ideologically unworkable for various reasons. (Even most leftists are against "America First" style isolationism for WW2 or Ukraine.) So international law is valuable in the sense that, at least in principle, it helps you figure out who the bad guy is: Who is breaking international law? That may sound rather academic, but in practice it seems to carry more weight than you might expect.

To state my position another way: I think having some sort of international law is a good idea, even if the current scheme needs to be reworked. A better scheme might be: Have some ritualized, non-lethal way for nations to test strength against each other, e.g. through athletic competitions or wargames, as a binding method of resolving disagreements. This could be game-theoretically stable, if success at the "ritual test of strength" is thought to correlate strongly with real-world war performance. Furthermore, any state which initiates lethal, kinetic confrontation after losing the "ritual test of strength" (sore losers who refuse to abide by the outcome) should become international pariahs subject to secondary sanctions.

And the thing about war is that there's no real way to tell who's going to win. For instance I think many people believe that the war in Afghanistan basically simmered down once the media coverage of it simmered down. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The Taliban was killing US proxies and soldiers alike, by the tens of thousands. The only way we could have even possibly won would have been a full-on ground invasion which would have entailed at least tens of thousands of US deaths, which Americans would never tolerate so it wasn't even an option. We withdrew because we were losing - the Taliban defeated the US. No sort of proxy you could ever create would predict that.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...

If a mafia boss defines anything he gets away with as legal, that's not aligned with what we commonly think of as legal justice and thus a pointless distinction.

So I've made peace with mafia boss power politics keeping the number of countries with nuclear weapons on the low end of the spectrum, and for that matter I'd support a much more aggressive approach to that end than we have seen these last 30 years.

It’s not that people were just too dumb or too scared to do something about it.

As challenging as it sounds, we need to develop a strong impartial international institution whose the only mission would be maintaining peace and preventing wars on the planet. This should be the only entity that's approved to have nuclear weapons.

The scenario you concocted here is Disneyland. It’s not just challenging, it’s just an oppressive version of the UN, but it won’t be impartial because it will be the most powerful organization on the planet and a target for every extremist and ideologue that seeks to acquire power. You haven’t changed the game, you’ve temporarily changed the battlefield.

This speaks like someone who has never been outside of a heavily bureaucratized regime. People don't get "approval" for things, they just do them.

Agreed. Let's start with US and Russia first.

Or maybe that is the wrong approach, but the policy we've had that let North Korea develop nukes and Iran at least get very close also isn't working.

Iran is more straightforward. I don't know why we've been so reluctant to make real diplomatic effort, especially after so many of Iran's proxies were significantly weakened in the last year or two, and Iran's sway was at a minimum. There seems to be an unwritten rule that once we've categorized a country as an enemy we're obligated to deal with them in the dumbest ways imaginable.

>> A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them.

you're both correct.

Also note the Iranian monarchy signed the NPT in 1970, while the Iranian Revolution was in 1979. When your national origin story is built on the illegitimacy of the previous government, why would you consider yourself to be constrained by the actions of your illegitimate parents?

When the west has had such overthrows, we've tended to declare the acts of the previous administration null-and-void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_9_August_1944

Not saying the current Iranian government is good, just acknowledging that legitimacy is determined by the victors, and the current regime has been victorious over the previous, just as last night's B2's were victorious against the air defenses. Might makes right, morality is increasingly a propaganda story, and history really is written by the victors.

There was a hope that once they acquired nuclear weapons, rogue countries would become responsible, because they didn't need to worry about their own existence. Pakistan has proven this theory wrong, sponsoring terrorism in in its neighbouring countries and abroad while being immune from the consequences.

Yes, tell me more about the US please

I think all current nuclear-weapon states would very much care, because it diminishes their status. Also Switzerland or Brasil would be breaking the Non-Proliferation Treaty which would make even more countries and the UN and IAEA care.

In general many sanctions around nukes are based on many many treaties and the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs. [2]

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferat...

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_disarmament

Israel is not a singer of the treaty.

Several countries have voluntarily dismantled nuclear weapons programs (the participants in the South American nuclear arms race of the 1980s being examples), and several countries have voluntary disarmed of actual nuclear weapons. South Africa is not unique in doing either.

It is arguably unique among the latter group in not having inherited the weapons as a successor state from a distinct preceding regime, but even if we were going to draw broad conclusions from n=1 examples, its quite arguably that that is less relevant to the difference in experience versus that of (say) Ukraine than other geopolitical factors.

> It built 6 nuclear weapons during the apartheid era, but then voluntarily dismantled them and joined the NPT. This decision was influenced by international pressure, political changes, and a desire for greater global integration. Despite that, it suffered no negative consequences to its sovereignty or regional power projection abilities.

Kind of hard to specifically isolate the loss of regional power South Africa experienced from nuclear disarmament from the loss of regional power it experienced from other causes concurrently, but it certainly had less after than before.

What made me realize that was the people who jumped in defense of Russia, because the people of Ukraine aren't allowed to join EU or NATO, because for some reason the people of a sovereign country have to respect the will of a paranoid neighbour, who wants to keep a "buffer zone" for completely irrational reasons. Who would have invaded? The Belgians?

And I mention the Ukraine because they will surely think:"We should have kept those nukes". And wo can blame them, one of the powers at the Budapest memorandum attacked them while the other two reluctantly sent weapons. So with nukes they would have had better cards.

After this episode the Iran is probably more motivated than ever to get nukes. And who can blame them, they had a good deal with the west, Trump comes along tears it up, can't deal with the consequences of tearing it up, Israel is so comfy the US will dance to its tune they attack and surely the clowns dance. Lesson: don't make deals, these idiots just listen to raw power.

Who loses? Everybody.

"Unauthorized" because Trump and Netanyahu deliberately killed the international program that was keeping the system in check.

Also, Netanyahu belongs not in prison but on the electric chair.

It's unsurprising but very, very depressing.

These people don’t deserve fair trial

Source: Because I said so

—-

"Might makes right"

"The stronger always blames the weaker"

"My need of food is guilt enough of yours" ("Ты виноват уж тем, что хочется мне кушать")

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_and_the_Lamb

Only last week they were asserting that Israel's phone spyware industry isn't any different from any other countries [2]. I pointed out the pattern at that point, but my comment was flagged.

"Sure, Netanyahu bad, but whatabout [outrageous lie justifying Israeli war crimes]". It's pretty whiffy when it keeps happening just like this.

0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41570806

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42720493

2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44266008