| ▲ | U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites(bbc.co.uk) |
| 863 points by mattcollins 13 hours ago | 1049 comments |
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| ▲ | mark_l_watson 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| A liberal Israeli friend has told me on a few occasions that Iran is one of the safest places in the Middle East for Christians and Jews to live, work, and raise families as long as they don’t publicly protest against the Iranian government. I have no way of knowing if my friend is correct about this, but with the conflicting news broadcasts in the USA the situation is as confusing as hell. Off topic, but I have started finding news shows on the Internet from different countries like Singapore to try to figure out some semblance of truth about the world. |
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| ▲ | cakealert 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Iran never had the deterrent North Korea had. And by being a theocracy they heavily skewed any threat calculus against themselves. What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all. I suspect that after their nuclear program was discovered and set back they fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy and convinced themselves they could repurpose it as leverage. But they are a theocratic regime and their messaging (whether genuine or not) made that a non-viable option in reality. This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you? Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first if you can't destroy their capability by other means. What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives. |
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| ▲ | jonyt 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I had somehow thought that the past few centuries had made it abundantly clear that democracies are much better then dictatorships for people both within the country and outside it, but this thread makes it depressingly clear that that's not the case.
Just to be clear: Iran worked hard to destabilize countries in the Middle East (e.g. Lebanon and Yemen) and caused much death and suffering, it executes gays by hanging them from cranes, its police beat up and rape women who go outside insufficiently covered. North Korea has starved to death many of its people, who have no freedoms and are routinely jailed and tortured for no cause. It threatens South Korea regularly with violence.
Dictators are not the good the good guys, for their people or their neighbors. Even the worst democracy is a thousand times better. | | |
| ▲ | diggan 13 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Dictators are not the good the good guys, for their people or their neighbors. Trying to find a clear line of "good vs evil guys" is bound to led you down a bad path. Is how Iran treat people very shitty and outright evil? Yes. Does that mean other countries should feel OK with invading them to "liberate" them? Probably no and feels like a very dangerous line of thinking that could be used to invade basically any country, including the US itself. I don't think many people are arguing that Iran is some beacon of democracy and treating their people right, but regardless of that, we tend to favor sovereignty of nations for a good reason, yet it seems like some countries still struggle with accepting this. |
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| ▲ | epolanski 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Iran never had the deterrent North Korea had. I feel very conflicted about what's happening. On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked. > What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives. That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict. | | |
| ▲ | mattmaroon 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Ukraine gave up working nukes, don’t forget them. I think the point of this bombing is to change the calculus you just mentioned. Now there’s an actual reason to not try for nukes, you may get bombed. NK’s conventional weapons (and SK’s pointed right back at them) saved them from conflict, that’s how they got to nukes without us doing something like this. They already had mutually assured destruction from conventional weapons and proximity to an ally. Iran’s problem is we don’t care much about anyone around them except Israel, and they already would destroy Israel if they could, so they had nobody’s head at which to aim their bullet. NK’s government is an evil one but the Kims really like being alive and that keeps them somewhat rational. They are quite obviously not religious since they claim to be God (and surely are aware they are not), so they don’t believe in benefits to martyrdom. Islamism is a death cult (and I mean that literally) so their actions aren’t rational as we would define the word. We can’t rely on their self-preservation instinct the way we can with the Kims. | |
| ▲ | margorczynski 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked. This is the key. People talk some crazy stories about Iran being a theocratic state whose life mission is destroying Israel but the fact is they don't want to end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat. And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US. So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction. | | |
| ▲ | elcritch 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > end up like Libya, Syria or any other country Israel considers a threat. You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not. Syria was embroiled and toppled by Islamic Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham backed by Turkey. Libya was due to civil war. Several of these conflicts were funded by Iran as well. You can go down the list. Please study at least some basics on the region. > So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction. One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Theocracies can be unpredictable. Also they could provide dirty bombs to their proxies in the region. | | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Just to set the story straight: - Libya was bombed primarily by France and then other NATO countries for no good reason. And from a functioning dictatorship it is a failed state. - Syria was invaded by Turkey/US right after the civil war started. In the world we all live in you need to have powerful deterrents so that the US/France/UK/NATO will not dare to bomb you for whatever reason they feel "justified" to do. In an extreme, I think every country should have a lot of nukes so other countries can mind their own business. | | |
| ▲ | BrandoElFollito 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > In an extreme, I think every country should have a lot of nukes so other countries can mind their own business. The problem is that countries tend to assume that the neighbors are also their business. | |
| ▲ | looofooo0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Forget Ryssian involvment in Syria and Libiya! | | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree an hour ago | parent [-] | | I did not forget that. But the Russians banked on the opportunity after the fact. They did not bombed them because they did not like their leaders just because. |
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| ▲ | scotty79 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > other countries can mind their own business Right. Because nothing says "I can mind my own business." like nuclear weapons being at most one coup from being launched at someone, possibly you. People thought nuclear weapons are a defensive deterrent but what war in Ukraine showed us they are actually offensive weapons that deter anyone from defending to strongly when you attack them with your conventional forces. Both russia and USA used their nuclear weapons in that manner for the last few decades. It's time to call the thing that quacks what it is, a duck. | | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree an hour ago | parent [-] | | > Right. Because nothing says "I can mind my own business." like nuclear weapons being at most one coup from being launched at someone, possibly you. You're saying not all countries should be able to have powerful weapons just because there might be a coup. Who decides that? You? Me? A random guy on the street? A random bureaucrat from a random country? There are very few people who think they can win a nuclear exchange. And somehow I don't think a random guy in Africa or the Middle East is so sure about it that it risks launching nukes at its neighbor(s). |
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| ▲ | roenxi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not. The comment didn't suggest that exactly. > One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership. They've probably figured out retaliation is a possibility here - if this is Israel's defence when they aren't even being threatened, imagine what they will do in their defence when the Iranians actually do something directly! Even if the Iranians are legitimately stupid at some level the campaign of missile strikes must have registered that they are vulnerable to missiles. | | |
| ▲ | elcritch 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That’s the point of my comment. Israel and several other nations like Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, etc have all been undergoing attacks by Iranian funded proxies for decades. | | |
| ▲ | ivape 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why do you think that’s true? You can take an average person globally and more or less realize it takes very little to make someone anti-Israeli foreign policy. It doesn’t take some large brainwashing operation. In fact, one could argue the propaganda is coming from a side that wants to paint a narrative that there is this huge operation against Israel when in reality an average 16 year old in America can spot the bad actor in a situation rather quickly (yes, that’s genz , the supposedly “brainwashed” dumbasses). Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2). They are making trauma informed decisions, and can never be trusted to do so alone because it’s actual trauma. The biggest myth is that Israel is a first world country but there’s no evidence of it. Buildings and infrastructure do not make you a first world country (behold China). Any country that is that brutal will never meet the criteria, it’s a third world country that is new and learning just like every other third world country. Blood-thirst (blood-rage? They see red.) is an understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025. We need things to change over the next 20 years. They do not know how to manage life due to just how intense their historical trauma was. There’s no one over there with a cool head and clinically there wouldn’t be (how do you just act normal after the holocaust? You can’t.) The failure of the Trump admin is unique and unlike any other administration. It is was once accepted that Israel is not level headed (again, not an insult, one cannot be balanced if one emerges through hellfire) and cannot dictate foreign policy. Trump just said “fuck it, go ahead traumatized child, do as you please” - this was pure insanity. Love is protecting your brothers and sisters from themselves (my brothers keeper). The world did not get safer, where are the cooler heads in the room? | | |
| ▲ | Ntrails 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Trump just said “do as you please” - this was pure insanity. I'm all for attacking Trump when justified, but given how Biden managed Gaza it is spectacularly unclear that we would expect a different outcome from Dems. | | |
| ▲ | ivape 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | We can’t know for sure since we’re not God. If Biden did what Trump did, then all that would solidify is that the Israeli lobby in America is hierarchically above both parties. I don’t think Biden would have done it. Take the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, which happened in Trump’s first term. What stable President agitates a situation like that? He was uniquely allied with Netanyahu for awhile, and Netanyahu has exclaimed that Trump is the best friend Israel ever had: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-calls... |
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| ▲ | elcritch an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Why do you think that’s true? You can take an average person globally and more or less realize it takes very little to make someone anti-Israeli foreign policy. It doesn’t take some large brainwashing operation. In fact, one could argue the propaganda is coming from a side that wants to paint a narrative that there is this huge operation against Israel when in reality an average 16 year old in America can spot villainy rather quickly. Because I lived there for 6 months during a study abroad I randomly ended up doing. I'd never had a Jewish or Muslim friend before going. Living there I had Palestinian and Jewish neighbors. I had to read lots of books on both sides of the topic and write papers on them. Along with deep conversations with both Israelis and Palestinians. Admittedly more with Israelis than Palestinians. Though I do have some fond memories of Palestinians. The experience forced me out of my previously much more sheltered technology and American centric world view which is what I'd say was your somewhat average 16 year old American's viewpoint, if on the more liberal atheistic side at the time. I likely would've been convinced of the same things as yourself when I was younger and more naive and saw the headlines I do now. That said, I'm not pro-Netanyahu or many of the things he does. He's a hardliner. > Jews are a traumatized people. They can never truly shed the insecurity that entire continents and countries can be hostile toward them (the entirety of Europe during ww2). You're not wrong. They're also a resilient people. Remember it's not just WWII, but most Israeli's, their parents and grand parents have also grown up with constant war or thread of war. It does affect psychology when many neighboring groups like Iran and Hamas not only want to destroy your state but also want to kill all Jews. That's their public official positions. It's not just rhetoric either as they routinely attack. Ultimately Palestinian leaders and political groups have never wanted peace with Israel from everything I've studied, and neither does Iran. Finally Israel was making progress towards peace with the Abraham accords (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Accords) which Trump helped negotiate. Some scholars I've read believe this is part of what led to Hamas's October 7th attacks as they would loose influence if Arab nations started making peace with Israel. > Bloodthirst is understatement when it comes to this country as of 2025. It's easy to throw such statements around. However, look at the state of most of the region. What Israel is doing is tame compared to some of the atrocities occurring but which don't make regular news. | | |
| ▲ | more-nitor 10 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > What Israel is doing is tame compared to this. even though some Israel's actions are spooky (targeted-exploding walkytalkies?), they're at least designed to minimize civilian deaths (or at least they're trying) But... Iran and their ilks (eg. Hamas)? they not only don't give a shit, but actively seek to kill civilians with maximum brutality (baby beheadings, killing & parading even with non-israeli bodies) |
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| ▲ | spwa4 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "they [Israel] aren't even being threatened" Are you even arguing in good faith? Over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op9EFTPQhw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulXulltxXZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V21yoWN_U3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hLDjGdJC0Q | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | One of those videos is literally titled "Iran's Ahmadinejad Keeps Up Bluster Against Israel" and another is about treaty negotiations. If countries are going to launch a military response every time a leadership figure starts blustering or negotiations don't go well we're going to be in a lot of wars. Bluster isn't a threat that the military are going to respond to. Imagine I used the word "credible" above if you want. | | |
| ▲ | sfn42 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Iran and Israel were allies before Iran was taken over by religious leaders. Even after that, Israel tried to keep the peace hoping that reasonable people would take over again but they never did. Iran has been supplying and funding Hamas and other enemies of Israel for decades. In my mind there is no doubt who the good guys are in that particular conflict. Iran started it decades ago for no reason other than religious hate, has kept it up until now and Iran is the one escalating. | | |
| ▲ | mafuy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe most of this is true, I don't know. I got the impression that both their governments are total shit. But you'll certainly have to agree that most of the escalation is due to Israel's action (not words) in attacking first and at a large scale. | | | |
| ▲ | belter an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Iran has been supplying and funding Hamas Qatar has probably funded Hamas more than Iran and now the future Air Force One is a Qatari plane... “Qatar has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level” - Donald J. Trump - June 2017
"Qatar has been a key financial supporter of the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, transferring more than $1.8 billion to Hamas over the years..."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatari_support_for_Hamas | | |
| ▲ | ta1243 an hour ago | parent [-] | | The Don in charge of the USA isn't concerned about the money goes to Hamas, he just wants his slice. Qatar knows that and can respect that. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w an hour ago | parent [-] | | Unfortunately for basically everyone, this suggests a quick-win strategy for Iran: Bribe Trump, personally, with lots money or equivalent, to literally nuke Israel. What's wrong with this picture? (And I don't mean in the sense of a Futurama meme of Farnsworth saying "I don't want to live on this planet any more"). | | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | This would absolutely work if the other gulf states weren't prepared to bribe him much, much more to prevent it. And yes, it is dismal. We are essentially run by foreign countries until January 20, 2029. |
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| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel has also been funding Hamas and other enemies of Israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up... Reality is Israel is run by psychopaths who would be in jail if it weren't for their their cynical use of constant war as a misdirection. Much like the US. And Russia. And numerous other countries, some of which are still pretending to be democratic. The entire world order is built on greed, lies, narcissistic grandiosity, and violent murder at industrial scales. | | | |
| ▲ | ivape 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You don’t need a lot of funding to convince 15 year olds in Palestine to go murder. Pay closer attention to the settlements, it did more for mobilizing Israel’s enemies than any amount of psyops or military funding could ever do. It’s very clear to me Israel has had some of the most retarded foreign policy experts for decades now. The truth is the same truth we have in the U.S, 70+ million that voted for Trump harbor a higher degree of racism that is near impossible to stop (will take generations). Israelis HATE Palestinians, and therefore they cannot make even the most obvious game theory choices on building better safety environments (finance and launch a multi decade campaign to uplift Gaza from poverty of mind, heart, and material - unless you are fucking racist and would rather live in conflict than EVER give an inch.) | | |
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| ▲ | scotty79 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership. And Iran retaliated and actually some of it's missiles inflicted damage. We can only imagine what the damage would be if Isreal patiently waited for the Iran to feel read to attack Israel which it's always advertised as its goal. Also it already happened once. Nations of the region decided they are strong enough to attack Isreal and they did. It was bound to happen again and as the death toll in Isreal in the current conflict shows, despite pre-emptive strike damaging Iran's missile potential significantly, there's only so much you can do with defensive weapons. In this specific context pre-emptive strike on leaders and long range attack capabilities is not perfidious, it's just about the only thing you can do that's not stupid. |
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| ▲ | krzyk 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Allah or Jahwe, what's the difference. Both countries are some kind of theocracies, that see infidels as inferior. If Israel has nukes, so should Iran. At least Iran is Shia, so different from the most Muslims, which are Sunni. | | |
| ▲ | handfuloflight 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Allah or Jahwe, what's the difference. ...there is no difference. Islam and Judaism trace to Abrahamic monotheism. One through the son Isaac, the other through Ishmael. |
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| ▲ | rajup an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction. 100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid. The "existential threat" bs being peddled by a certain government is simply to give cover to illegal attacks on a sovereign nation. This is "WMDs in Iraq" all over again. | | |
| ▲ | mu53 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think they are stupid for broadcasting the program and threatening Israel with it. Believe people when they tell you what they are going to do. Even if Iran wouldn’t use it if they had it, threatening to use it shifts the probability for them using it. Khomeini isn’t on Kim jong un’s level | |
| ▲ | scotty79 25 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid. I'm not sure how can you say that, now that they are dead, completely due to how they positioned themselves on the regional and global landscape. |
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| ▲ | epolanski 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | When I said I was conflicted I meant that on one side it seems like a bad idea to give up WMDs for these countries, but it's also a bad idea for them to have them. In Iran's case this is further compounded by their consistent anti Israeli PR and anti-Israeli militias funding. | |
| ▲ | ashoeafoot an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They would use some proxxy and shroud the nuke in ambiguity . They have driven 45 years of proxxy war against israel and had it comingbso long its 1.5 generations family buisness now | |
| ▲ | solumunus 40 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Silly! Such flippant language. Yes, it would be silly. Jihadists do “silly” things all the time. Their goals are “silly”. | |
| ▲ | dlahoda 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | afaik as i recall gov of iran says israel is little satan and says it goal to kill it. is it crazy, sure. is it crazy story to say,no. it seems real. | | |
| ▲ | rusk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > gov of iran says israel is little satan A pretty popular opinion these days | | |
| ▲ | GlacierFox 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah it's surreal. Imagine if a terrorist group hopped the border into the USA and gleefully massacred a couple thousand people and then took loads of hostages into one of the most densely packed, boobie trapped , fundamentalist hell holes on the planet while being protected by the death-cult populace. That place would be leveled and you wouldn't hear a peep of opposition. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > That place would be leveled and you wouldn't hear a peep of opposition. You wouldn't hear any opposition from inside the USA. At the same time, the USA levelling the place would create a lot of opposition basically everywhere else. The UK government trying to toe the line with the USA about invading Iraq in the name of the GWOT was met with 10-16% of the UK population marching in protest against UK involvement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... This is something I bring up whenever anyone can't understand why Israel's response to Hamas' attack nearly two years ago now is likely even stronger than the USA's to 9/11 — even at best it would take a decade for the rage to dissipate, and the Israeli people are unlikely to care about the opinions of people like me for the same reason the Americans didn't. | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I was alive during 9/11 and this is more or less what we did, albeit in a more distant set of countries. I don't think we came out of the experience better off. | |
| ▲ | bavell an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nope, we would have sent in strike teams, special ops, etc to get the hostages out BEFORE leveling the place. Anything different would face massive opposition and carry a political death sentence for whoever gave the order. |
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| ▲ | breppp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | only means that their long game plan of sacrificing the palestinians for a chance at some regional/international influence is working | | |
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| ▲ | margorczynski 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The same shit NK says about SK and the USA but still I don't see nukes flying. You shouldn't mistake propaganda for the masses with the leadership being crazy fanatics. | | |
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| ▲ | FrozenSynapse 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > it would mean mutual destruction. some religious lunatics would deem that worthy | | |
| ▲ | m000 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > some religious lunatics would deem that worthy That would be primarily Evangelical Zionists, seeking to hasten the end of days. | |
| ▲ | dlahoda 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | it will not be mutual. look at map and size of countries. so it even no need to be lunatic to act some nukes. |
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| ▲ | dlahoda 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | israel is way smaller and easier to bomb. why would not iran gov sacrifice few million of its people to kill whole israel? | | |
| ▲ | spwa4 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Because Iran is a developed country and the Iranian population actually has a future if they take their government back from the clerics? Hell, in the next 30 or so years oil will disappear from the middle east, and Iran is just about the only country that has a realistic shot at still having an economy after that. | | |
| ▲ | HPsquared 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Libya was pretty developed with an educated population, decent economy etc too, more developed then Iran I'd say.. look how that turned out. State collapse is no joke. | | |
| ▲ | ALLTaken an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | there are private banks and operations similar to BlackWater, like Osherbrand and many others that steal, murder and take capital from the public by re-enforcing external threats and then providing "rescue" via their private fleet to extract the corrupt politicians for 30% to 70% commissions and murder away anyone hindering them. Collapse my ass, it's foreign influence and internal corruption. Like always. Be neutral and objective, but America, Ukraine and Israel are currently the most agresively operating forces salivating over WW3. Yes, Russia is also quite brutal, but it's not going to profit from WW3 on the stock market! Who are the PROFITEERS of this? How can WE fight this war mongering? Do we need to get active on the Battlefield?
Do we need to sabotage Sattelite Networks, disarm financial incentives etc. etc. to combat those who want a WW3? Only billionaires are going to become richer from a war.
Everyone else will eat radioactive food and their DNA will be wiped out forever from the human gene pool. Seem like an Eugenic goal | | |
| ▲ | libertine 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Ukraine is being invaded in a genocidal war to try to annex them and delete them from the map, by Russia. Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum with Ukraine for them to surrender their nukes. All while Russia is threatning with nuclear destruction of Ukraine and Western countries. So, how the hell is Ukraine salivating over WW3 and Russia isn't LMAO |
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| ▲ | inglor_cz an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Libya was also tribal in its core. Nation building takes decades if not centuries and cannot be substituted by quick oil money. Iran is not tribal, it is a fairly ancient empire with strong continuity over 2500 years. Approximately as old as Rome, but with no collapse. Iran will almost certainly hold together if the current batch of rulers disappears. It survived even the Mongols. |
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| ▲ | rusk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > if they take their government back from the clerics? They took back their government and they “gave” it to the clerics back in C20 The Iranians by and large have the state they want. Strong parallel with Irish history where independence brought about a theocratic Junta. That only went away with deeper integration into the European economy. | |
| ▲ | anonnon 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Because Iran is a developed country and the Iranian population actually has a future if they take their government back from the clerics They're talking about the current regime, from which it isn't clear the population will ever successfully take back their country. |
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| ▲ | echoangle 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > And a reminder - Israel has illegals WMDs, using technology and nuclear material stolen from the US. By what means are the israeli nukes (I assume thats whats meant by WMDs?) illegal? They didn't sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and I don't think spying and stealing is illegal between countries under international law. | | |
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| ▲ | perihelions 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > "You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked." It's not that simple. Those countries were destined towards collapse with or without nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Syria—those are three countries that fell into catastrophic civil wars, along internal conflict lines, in power vacuums succeeding an unpopular dictator. None of those autocracies were stable in the long-term. (But a nuclear weapon is quite stable; it succeeds the falls of governments and passes on to whoever replaces them). Deplore US' strategic stupidities all you want; but it's not the only actor with agency in the world. Would anyone have been better off with Assad fighting a version of the 2010's civil war with nuclear weapons in his arsenal? Or Hussein, that sectarian war? Those are two men who gassed thousands of innocents with nerve agents; they wouldn't surely wouldn't hesitate long about dropping nukes. (Can you deter a civil war with nuclear weapons?) We could also ask who would have inherited a hypothetical Qaddafi nuke, after his fall: which Libya? There were at least three Libyas one point. ISIL governed one! (One semantic nitpick: I don't think it's fair to say those dictators "gave up" their WMD's. With all three, their WMD programs were forcibly taken from them. In Iraq, 1981, the bombing of the Osirak reactor; and again in the 1991 Gulf War the bombing of Tuwaitha (which permanently ended Iraq's uranium enrichment). Qaddafi turned over all his nuclear materials to the USA, after being directly threatened, in the months following US' 2003 invasion of Iraq. And Assad lost his North Korean-built plutonium reactor in 2007, to an airstrike. Did anyone of these dictators have agency in those "give up WMD" choices? I think not). | |
| ▲ | nine_k 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Indeed, nuclear weapons are a tricky thing. On one hand, there are nuclear non-proliferation treaties, on the other, peaceful nuclear power plants. To obtain nukes, you have to have good relationships with the current big powers, build peaceful nuclear installations, and very covertly produce the weapons based on it, while the big boys look the other way, or maybe even secretly help. That's approximately how China, India, Pakistan, and Israel obtained their nukes. (North Korea is a special case.) Once you've obtained some nukes, complete with decent rockets to liv them, nobody is going to mess with you too badly, or try to take the nukes back; you're now a member if the club. Japan or South Korea would likely be able to produce nuclear weapons in a few months if they needed to. I bet even Ukraine could, with its remaining nuclear plants and relatively advanced industry, and are on friendly terms with the US. But if you made enemies with the big members of the nuclear club, and with the US in particular, they will do everything to stop you, and your situation would become much harder; that's the case with Iran. | |
| ▲ | davedx 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Don’t forget Ukraine - gave up their nukes and look what happened | | |
| ▲ | lIl-IIIl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They never really had them. They were in Ukraine but Moscow had control. | | |
| ▲ | varjag 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a minor distinction. In they end they all set off by pyrotechnic charges. Authorization sequence is nothing an industrial power can't get around. | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You seem to completely misunderstand why the entire world wanted Ukraine to get rid of their ICBMs. 1) They could not operate them. It isn't just about authorization sequence, it's about having all of the required electronics. You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs. All of those were in Moscow hands. Even if Ukraine could ignite them, it could not launch them or set their paths, etc. 2) They did not have the budget to guard them, let alone maintain them, even less reverse engineer. The biggest risk was that rough states with deep pockets would buy those rockets on the black market (and Ukraine notably sold out most of their soviet arsenal). 3) Thus, the only real asset was the nuclear material itself. An asset that was more likely going to end up on the black market than do anything useful for Ukraine's defense. | | |
| ▲ | varjag 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's so much wrong you crammed into just three points am at loss to even where should I start. The value of nuclear weapons is in the warheads not delivery vehicles. Even then Ukraine absolutely could maintain a trimmed down nuclear arsenal with the missiles/engines serviced by Yuzhmash. After all bare ass Russia did it in the 1990s somehow. All the American financing of nuclear security to Russia would have been proportionally redirected to Ukraine. Then, Ukraine possessed a stockpile of highly enriched uranium all way until 2011. It was indeed sold off under Yanukovich to a rogue state though: Russia. There is one huge drawback to not signing the memorandum: Lukashenka's Belarus (another signatory) would have also kept the nukes. This is however never brought up by the memorandum fans and non-proliferation enjoyers on the Internet precisely because it's not something they would have minded. | |
| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs. No you don't. Cold war ICBMs all used intertial guidance. The most advanced in the form of the MX had a max CEP of 90 m. | |
| ▲ | krzyk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Don't forget, but keeping nukes in Ukraine, would mean that Russia would get less of them. | | |
| ▲ | cmcaleer an hour ago | parent [-] | | It wasn't really particularly material whether Russia had 30,000 nukes or 32,000 nukes in 1994. It was material if other states got the components that were in those 2,000 nukes. |
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| ▲ | Braxton1980 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Could they have jerryrigged them?
For example load one into a truck (similar to the recent drone incident), drive it to the Kremlim, and then force a detonation? | |
| ▲ | varispeed 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Really? 1) Nukes were built mostly by Ukrainian engineers. They would do just fine. They could also build and launch satellites if needed. 2) So Ukraine couldn't launch them because they needed electronics and satellites, but some rogue state with deep pocket could? Okay. 3) Of course! Comrade, that is Russian propaganda you are disseminating here. |
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| ▲ | cromka 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Then why would they need a full Budapest memorandum with co-signees if Moscow could just take them back? This sounds ridiculous. | | |
| ▲ | varjag 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It was indeed because there was no legal foundation for Russian ownership of all Soviet nuclear assets, no matter how every other nuclear power wanted it at the time. | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | By the way a "memorandum" is a document that forms no legal foundation at all. |
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| ▲ | dlahoda 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | because rockets to be transported to russkies back. if they would not sign, some bad things could happened along the way. |
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| ▲ | libertine 21 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's a recurring Russian propaganda point, which is easily verifiable as a lie. Even basic logic - Ukraine had the technical know-how to do whatever they wanted with the nukes. Moscow didn't have control, at best on paper - if they had control, there was no need for the Budapest Memorandum. I keep debunking this propaganda point over and over again lol | |
| ▲ | TiredOfLife 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And Ukraine built them. | | |
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| ▲ | justsomehnguy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not theirs and you conveniently omit everything what happened in between, including the giant amounts of money directly and indirectly poured into it. | | |
| ▲ | o_m 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | What do you mean it was not theirs? The Soviet Union was dissolved and split into multiple states. Russia is not the Soviet Union, just another part of the former Soviet Union like Ukraine. | | |
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| ▲ | walterlw 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Now every country that has the capacity to get a strategic deterrent will race to get one. So much for Biden's escalation management. Too bad Trump likes Russia so much he does everything not to step on their toes. With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now. | | |
| ▲ | b33j0r 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My counter-argument to norms being the main deterrent is simple. It’s never going to get easier to hide an Oak Ridge in your rogue state. The industrial scale of uranium enrichment has a fundamental limit, no matter how you do it. You have to process massive piles of mass into a very small fraction. And you have to collect all those rocks. And that’s just for fission. As long as any country with preemptive strike capability exists, and satellites exist… I just don’t see how anyone could do it. | | | |
| ▲ | averageRoyalty 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Genuine question, if the US has that capability and Trump is the issue, why didn't Biden do what was needed to make the war over? | | |
| ▲ | walterlw 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Biden took the approach of keeping 10 pairs of gloves on when dealing with Russia. Don't help too little not to make it too easy for the russians, don't help to much to avoid escalation. | | |
| ▲ | averageRoyalty 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I understand and agree with that. But you said "With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now.". If that was viable, why would Biden not have done so during the years he had? |
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| ▲ | lazide 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The US has every incentive to turn Ukraine into Russia’s Vietnam. |
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| ▲ | FpUser 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >"With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now." And you know this how? Accordingly to all those initial predictions Russia should be already disintegrated and fallen under heavy sanctions, Putin's regime replaced etc. etc. I suspect all these analytics and think tanks should be cleaning toilets instead. Also there is a line in that backing crossing which may lead to an all out nuclear war. Rational countries that matter understandably do not want to test it unless their existence is really threatened. |
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| ▲ | ben_w an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > That's speculation. Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict. So, I have an honest (non rhetorical) question: Was NK saved more by having their own nukes, or by sharing a land border with China who has nukes and doesn't want the US getting involved in the area? | | | |
| ▲ | JKCalhoun an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked. By your logic, I am a little surprised Iran is still even a state then. | |
| ▲ | ashoeafoot an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | All those countries would have plunged into internal turmoil after arab spring - us involvement or not - so Isis, hezbullah or al quaida with nukes would be the news now. | |
| ▲ | lonelyasacloud 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that. Libya, Syria, Iraq gave up their WMD projects eventually got bombed/attacked. Or had them, and then gave them up because they were under the impression that they would be protected if they did so; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_de... | |
| ▲ | quonn 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You lack that deterrent you get attacked, as simple as that No you don't, unless you're a dictatorship (including all the examples you gave). | | | |
| ▲ | contrarian1234 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | But why a nuclear bomb? I never understood the logic.. (or maybe it's the theatric element?) There are other WMD that seem much simpler. If they hypothetically release some horrible biological agent in Israel - it could incapacitate the country overnight Or set off a dirty bomb to make huge regions unlivable (just the perception of radiation risk would preclude many from living there.. see Fukushima) | |
| ▲ | compsciphd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | why do you view nukes as the ultimate deterrent? Israel has nukes and it gets attacked. This proves the above is a logical fallacy. | |
| ▲ | scotty79 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > On one side it is clear that no country should give up their WMD projects. That sounds insane. I don't think world would be more peaceful if every country under every government had WMDs. We'd be in the middle of nuclear winter now if that was the case. You could draw analogies to everyone owning a gun. We know it just ends up with many more dead and nothing being more peaceful. > Since you name NK that's a clear example of a country having nuclear deterrent actually saving the region from a conflict. He's wrong. What protects North Korea is that it's poor, has no natural resources and devastated human capital and neither attacks anyone with terrorist attacks nor credibly prophesies their intent to kill any nation or ethnicity. If they did that, they'd be steamrolled already. WMDs or not. | |
| ▲ | moltude 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Add Ukraine to that list. | |
| ▲ | BrandoElFollito an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ukraine is another example from a different area |
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| ▲ | dreghgh 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you? Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice. | | |
| ▲ | Gud 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | But clearly all these smart people are not involved in the decision making, considering how Iran’s foreign policy has looked like, exactly how parent described. | | |
| ▲ | diggan an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > clearly all these smart people are not involved in the decision making Why not? Smart people can make decisions that look weird from the outside. The foreign policy of the US been looking weird for decades to most outside parties, yet I'm sure there are smart people involved in it on a daily basis. But even with smart people involved, the US been invading countries based on false premises more than once, not sure why it would need to be different for Iran or any other country. | |
| ▲ | dreghgh 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Compare military spending by Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and the United States (only Middle East related) with Iranian military spending, over the four decades of Iran's shadow wars with these countries and isolation by much of the rest of the world. And yet Iranian proxies have repeatedly challenged these powers across the Middle East, in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Sinai, etc. And a lot of Iran's actions have broad support in many other Middle Eastern countries, including strong US allies, those where there are no natural ethnic, religious or linguistic ties to Iran, and where there is prosperity based on peace and the American world order. Whatever else the Iranian govt are, they are not foreign policy under-hitters or flawed tacticians blinded by dogmatism. | | |
| ▲ | reissbaker 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | On the contrary: at this point all of that spending appears to have been a waste. Hezbollah neutralized, Syria regime-changed, Gaza in tatters, and now they've lost their nuclear program. Imagine if they'd spent the money on education, or developing their economy. They could easily have reconciled with the U.S. if they stopped chanting "Death to America" and done something productive with their time and money. This was the inevitable result of their plans, and easily predictable. | | |
| ▲ | dreghgh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not sure you know much about Iran. They did spend a lot of the oil revenue on both education and developing their economy. Compare them perhaps to Saudi Arabia, a similar sized country with much more oil and much fewer people. Saudi does not have any industry, does not export anything except hydrocarbons. All the extraction is done by foreign engineers. Iran educates engineers, including many foreign students, has industry outside of oil, and largely works its own drilling and refinery. The Iranian economy is not dependent on migrant labor. Saudi pays billions to Europe and America for high tech weaponry, yet can't defeat the Houthis. A considerable proportion of the money goes to baksheesh both for the Saudis themselves and their western suppliers. If Saudi decided tomorrow to challenge its Western backers in any real way, the umbrella would be withdrawn and the guys in the solid gold cars would last about a week. Iran has wreaked havoc throughout the region for 40 years by putting $30 rifles, $200 RPGs, $100 IEDs and now, $2000 drones in the right (wrong) hands at the right time. They haven't lost a regular soldier in battle since the 1980s. Even if you're calling the end of Iranian influence in the region right now, it's still an incredible run of hitting above one's weight. The only country in the Middle East this can be compared with is Israel, who are themselves legendary for hyper-insightful tactical leverage. | | |
| ▲ | jimbob45 an hour ago | parent [-] | | I’ve seen this Iranian engineer myth perpetuated ad nauseum on every social network for the last 24 hours and never before that, as if a desperate attempt to repaint the country as anything but a failed state. The reality is that Iran has been propped up by China and Russia for decades and has wasted all of its incoming capital on weapons and kickbacks rather than doing anything to boost its domestic situation. | | |
| ▲ | dreghgh an hour ago | parent [-] | | Just because you didn't know something until 24 hours ago does not make it a myth. |
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| ▲ | netsharc an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Result 1 of 9 for "death to America". Do you like it when people quote you out of context?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393 |
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| ▲ | nivertech 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 1. Haha, just because someone is smart/knows one thing, doesn't mean they are smart/knows everything about all things. Especially when talking about people educated in STEM, not Humanities or Philosophy 2. There are plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are religious fanatics or just power hungry or want to advance in the IRGC ranks/carrier ladder. Khamene.ai is a Living God and there are many engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who worship this deity 3. There are also lots of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts who are threatened and forced to work for the IRGC. Just like it was in the Soviet Union under the Communism | | |
| ▲ | rxtexit 37 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Of course you get down voted.So many delusional people on this forum that believe themselves to be experts in all domains because they get well paid to write javascript. We will just forget that von Neumann advocated for nuclear first strike based on game theory. |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Religious government or not, Iran has plenty of engineers, statisticians, scientists and intelligence analysts working for their foreign policy and war effort. Your underestimating this betrays prejudice America also has lots of brilliant people. Then we have Hegseth, Noem and the other fuck. | |
| ▲ | vixen99 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As you say 'probably. How do you know no simulations have been explored? Or is this an assumption that events somehow prove that suggestion? Some might take issue with that. |
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| ▲ | heresie-dabord 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | With all due respect, please reconsider these points: > This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent Well now we should all be terrified. > Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first You should reflect on the religious elements prominently at play within these belligerent states. I deplore kakistocracy of any stripe, but it is obvious that dictatorships and dictatorship-curious regimes of any sort are an existential threat. | |
| ▲ | recroad 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Thank you, great liberator. Please bomb us more to save our lives. | | |
| ▲ | hashstring 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thank you for putting it so clearly and bluntly. People lack common sense, but not their appetite to ingurgitate the daily three meals that the propaganda machines prepared for them. |
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| ▲ | elif an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | All the intelligence says they weren't building nukes, but all the sudden we are to believe the narrative provided by a prolific liar who can't even articulate what it is that he wants Iran to do? Israel started bombing Iran and they returned fire. Is trump asking the largest economic and military power in the region to sit by idle as Israel sends missiles and bombs daily? He won't clarify even when asked directly. I don't think we have any reason to believe his narrative if he can't even explain it himself. I would also like to add that Trump himself is the one who removed IAEA inspectors from routine inspections of Iran, so occams razor would suggest this ambiguity is by design. | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | North Korea is a Chinese client state. As a general rule, client states are treated as extensions of the countries that control them. Iran is not a client state. | | |
| ▲ | choonway 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | NK is more of a russian client state, not chinese. | |
| ▲ | yard2010 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Iran is more like a server state, it serves terror and death through their proxies. It's like a vpn of destruction. | | |
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| ▲ | alkyon 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If anything, the lack of competence is on the other side. Was enriched uranium destroyed? I doubt it. Have they even "obliterated" Fordow site buried 90 m deep inside the mountain? I have serious doubts. Iran's nuclear program was set back some months if anything. | | |
| ▲ | birn559 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Care to elaborate? A random person doubting things doesn't help other people or bringing a discussion forward. | | |
| ▲ | fifilura 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree with the gp. Iran is a huge country and USA and Israel has been pointing their finger on this exakt spot for weeks. Either they dug further down or they just transported things away. Leaving it all there just seems like a really weird thing to do. | | |
| ▲ | whilenot-dev 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > transported things away This implies a tunnel system, or was this transport done in plain sight? | | |
| ▲ | perihelions 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's indeed a lot of transport happening in plain sight, https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-has-attacked-irans-nuc... > "Prior to tonight’s airstrikes on the three Iranian nuclear-associated facilities, Maxar collected high-resolution satellite imagery on June 19th and June 20th of the Fordow fuel enrichment facility that revealed unusual truck and vehicular activity near the entrance to the underground military complex. On June 19th, a group of 16 cargo trucks were positioned along the access road that leads to the tunnel entrance of the facility. Subsequent imagery on June 20th revealed that most of the trucks had repositioned approximately one kilometer northwest along the access road; however, additional trucks and several bulldozers were seen near the entrance to the main facility and one truck was positioned immediately next to the main tunnel entrance." | |
| ▲ | yehoshuapw 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | there actually are images of lots of movement there - so perhaps plain sight is the right answer. hopefully I am wrong |
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| ▲ | motorest 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Care to elaborate? A random person doubting things doesn't help other people or bringing a discussion forward. I don't know if you noticed, but what you are arguing for is in fact for mindlessly accepting unverified claims and extrapolate them to an optimal outcome. This is the opposite of critical thinking, and goes well beyond wishful thinking. Meanwhile, if you pay attention to OP's point, you'll understand that Iran's nuclear sites have been continuously designed and developed for decades, while subjected to an almost evolutionary pressure, to continue operations even after withstanding direct attacks in scenarios matching exactly Trump's attacks. In the very least, you must assess the effect of those strikes before making any sort of claim. Another factor which it seems you somehow missed was the fact that Russia, another nuclear-capable totalitarian regime, is nowadays heavily dependent on Iran to conduct it's imperialist agenda. If Russia was negotiating handing over nuclear capabilities to North Korea in exchange for supporting it's war effort, do you believe Russia now has no interest to speed up Iran's nuclear weapons programmes? | | |
| ▲ | 01100011 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Weird that Iran, an oil exporter with huge potential for solar, would expend so much energy on protecting a purportedly civilian nuclear program. I'm sure it's nothing. This isn't really relevant but I'm only making one comment in this post so I'll say it here: young folks don't remember decades of Iranian state sponsored terrorism and do not understand the context of conflict in the middle east. | | |
| ▲ | youngtaff 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sooner or later they’re going to run oil of oil and gas | |
| ▲ | oa335 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > context of conflict in the middle east. Conflict in the Middle East is entirely rooted in Israeli ethnic cleansing campaigns and western adventurism and protections of Israeli interests. If Iran went away tomorrow, the region would still have massive support for violent movements targeting Israel. |
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| ▲ | m000 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | To be frank, it wouldn't be a surprise for Trump to claim "total obliteration" while having achieved nothing substantial. This would also be a very convenient way to break the current impasse: Trump can claim victory and brag about US weapons, Iranians can continue their program virtually unscathed, perhaps after bombing some minor evacuated US base for show. After the dust settles, Iran can withdraw fron NNPT and the next day have Pakistan ship them a bomb. Peace (via MAD) achieved! Maybe we should even give Donald his Nobel prize for that. |
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| ▲ | herbst 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > No increase in radiation levels have been detected, the UN's nuclear watchdog says I guess means no. However I have no idea what they would say if they did. "Yes we poisoned the whole area for generations to come, success!" | |
| ▲ | hackerknew 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even if it is only set back by a few months, that is enough time to put pressure on Iran to abandon it altogether. Keep in mind, Israel has full aerial control over Iran and has taken out hundreds of their missile launchers. We can keep pounding the various nuclear facilities and hinder ant chances of rebuilding, making any effort futile. | | |
| ▲ | Ygg2 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | As Sun Tzu famously said: "You really should back your enemy in a corner and ask them for negotiations. Having someone's feet on hot coals really speeds it up. And if they break it, it's a case for using nukes against them. " Such advanced people, the Chinese are. | |
| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This would be a really risky strategy as it will push the Iranians into a corner with potentially large impacts on the oil price (which will change US public opinion). | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | That sounds to me like the US seriously needs to promote non-petroleum sources of energy. If not for the environment, for their own national sovereignity. | | |
| ▲ | dreghgh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The thing is, the United States is self sufficient in petroleum. But domestic prices will go up to reflect the effect on world supply. Arguably the same could happen given widespread use of non petroleum sources of energy. Prices will go up to reflect the marginal cost of hydrocarbon based energy, even if that use is minimal, until the point where the energy network is completely decoupled from those markets. This happened in the United Kingdom after the invasion of Ukraine. More wind was used as gas became more expensive. But the price of electricity from wind also went up. | | |
| ▲ | chgs 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | US could ban fuel exports. Unlikely as rich people would suffer, but they may be placated with bribes. | |
| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The UK increase was because of how the contracts work but yeah agreed in general. Sustainable energy is good for a bunch of non environmental reasons. |
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| ▲ | spacecadet 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yeah, but good luck! Been trying to convince people of this for years... | |
| ▲ | adastra22 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The US is a net oil exporter. | | |
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| ▲ | nmca 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How do you purport to know this? | | |
| ▲ | hajile 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Fordow is widely reported to be significantly deeper than GBU-57 can penetrate (which is just 60 meters). The only way they penetrate is landing two of them in the exact same hole (think Robin Hood splitting an arrow with another arrow). Off by just a little and it winds up with it's own separate 60m hole. CEP with GPS for our most accurate glide bombs is 5 meters. But GPS jamming is cheap and easy and the best precision we get in that case is 30 meters CEP. GPU-57 gets its power from gravity. Reaching that 60 meter maximum penetration requires dropping the bomb from maximum elevation, but without GPS, that further increases the CEP. With just 6 bombs, it seems unlikely that they could reliably penetrate. Actual penetration would likely require nuclear penetrators, but those also break the nuclear prohibition and open Pandora's box in places like Ukraine. A great example of the problem is Yemen. We tried to get the Houthi to stop by dropping bunker busters on their tunnel systems and completely failed. We were forced to reach a ceasefire agreement (one that likely went up in smoke last night). | |
| ▲ | coffeebeqn 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The layout of Fordow from what we’ve seen is not a single site. Depending on how many runs they did maybe it is all but destroyed or maybe it’s 1/3 destroyed. I’m sure Israel’s intelligence on it is pretty accurate (probably not public at this point) |
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| ▲ | KevinCarbonara 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't know that it can be confirmed, but Iran is claiming that the US tipped them off. This is a fairly standard tactic, and it makes more sense here. This is something that would satisfy both the pro-war crowd and the group that is pro-Israel or anti-Iran, but not necessarily pro-war. We get to show our strength and support for our allies without really committing. | |
| ▲ | stickfigure 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm willing to bet that the Americans can build another one of those GBU-57 bombs every some months if they had to. | |
| ▲ | adventured 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The US, Israel and possibly Britain will install a no-fly zone over Iran. Israel is going to be entirely unwilling to allow Iran to go right back to building again what just got destroyed. This was a once in decades shot for Israel to take against Iran, in its very weakened state (with its proxies out of commission, Syria knocked over, and Russia very preoccupied). They'll attempt the post Gulf War I approach against Iraq (as an invasion will never be on the table). Sanctions and no-fly zone. They'll retain control over Iran's sky and in doing so will be free to bomb as they see fit if Iran attempts to build or re-start something like Fordow. If they attempt to install new air defenses, they'll simply bomb them. Whether that one bombing took care of Fordow is going to be moot, they'll hit it ten more times if that's what it takes, and destroy anything that attempts to move in or out of there. Israel can't maintain a no-fly zone over Iran so the US will be enlisted to do the heavy lifting on that. | | |
| ▲ | 400thecat 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | aiding regime change would be much easier, and would solve all these problems better. At some point in the next few days, the regime will be so weakened that the Iranian people will overthrow it themselves | | |
| ▲ | dreghgh 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, this was also said about Iraq in 1991. | | |
| ▲ | adastra22 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The US negotiators in Iraq in ‘91 stupidly didn’t enforce a total no-fly zone, allowing the use of helicopters by the regime. Saddam used helicopter gunships to mow down the would-be revolutionaries attempting regime change. Israel won’t make the same mistake. | | |
| ▲ | dreghgh 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | 91 also happened in a brief period where Russia was holding back from supplying end-of-line military hardware to anyone who wanted to take a shot at the United States and its clients. |
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| ▲ | adventured 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The IRGC is unlikely to let the regime fall so easily. They'll kill a lot of Iranians to stop that from happening. The Iranian people have limited means to fight at present. The no-fly zone and sanctions approach will be used to attempt to strangle the regime over the coming years. It'll take a small miracle for the regime to fall anytime soon, it's not that weak yet (imo) despite what the propaganda is claiming. | | |
| ▲ | 400thecat 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Israel can bomb the IRGC and Basij bases, police and prisons (release political prisoners). They can collapse the regime, restrict its movement, eliminate chain of command. From there the Iranian people can raise and topple the regime | | |
| ▲ | TheAlchemist an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | This is quite interesting to me - how long can Isreal really continue with such intensity ? The distance between Israel and Iran is huge - it must be extremely expensive to operate the air bridge allowing their air force to operate as it did last week. But I would be really surprised if they can go on like that for a month. | |
| ▲ | disgruntledphd2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This seems wildly implausible. I've never heard of this happening as the result of foreign attacks. And also, any new regime is very unlikely to be more pro Israel or the US. |
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| ▲ | tharmas 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Overthrow and get what? Another Libya? |
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| ▲ | foldr an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’d be somewhat skeptical of how much can be achieved just by bombing. It didn’t do much to stop the Nazi war machine in WWII. We have better munitions now, but we also have a lot fewer of them, and the US public won’t tolerate 121,000 dead airmen, either. |
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| ▲ | dlahoda 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | it took nk 40+ years to get nukes.
is this definion of inching? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_m... also you say nk uses nukes as deterrent, deterrent from whom?
if they deterred any, they were fine deterring it for 40+ years without. | |
| ▲ | FilosofumRex 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel defines itself as a "jewish" state, and at least 50% of members of current governing parties in parliament are from religious parties and zionist parties. In what sense Israel is not a theocracy. | | |
| ▲ | 9dev 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Maybe the fact that every single one of these representatives has been appointed in a fair democratic vote? | | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Iran became a theocracy through a popular uprising, too. Democracy and theocracy are quite compatible, as long as the people are religious enough. | | |
| ▲ | 9dev 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That would mean the USA are a theocracy too, given most senators are Christian. That doesn’t make too much sense. Theocracy is a form of government in which religious leaders rule in the name of a deity, and religious law is the basis for all legal and political decisions. | | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The USA is not a theocracy, though. The majority-Christian senators are not generally enacting theocratic laws and regulations (though there are some tendencies and influences, as seen with the recent repeal of Roe v Wade, for example). However, Israel does have highly theocratic tendencies. Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute. They have even more religious influence on public life than the USA does (which is already somewhat high by European standards), with businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays (not selling risen bread during Passover, making elevators stop automatically on every floor during days of rest, observing kosher restrictions on food etc). Many of their foreign policy decisions are explicitly influenced by religious tenets, such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god (which includes modern day Israel, the Occupied Territories, and several parts of modern day Syria, Lebanon, and others). They're nowhere near the level of religous rule and/or fanaticism as Saudi Arabia, but they have much more religious influence and control of public life then a modern European/US-style democracy. | | |
| ▲ | 9dev 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The USA is not a theocracy, though. Hence I brought it up, yes. > Their constitution places Jewish identity on the same level as their democratic statute. Many reputable democracies[1], including Germany, Australia, Norway or Switzerland, have a reference to god in their constitution; that doesn't make them theocracies. Even in the USA, presidents swear their oath on the bible! > businesses in many cities being boycotted into respecting the Sabbath and other religious holidays Try purchasing something on a Christian holiday in Germany. Did you know it's prohibited by law to play Life of Brian in public on Easter Sunday there? > such as believing they were gifted the "land of Israel" by their god That in turn isn't government directive, but a political opinion amongst several. Now I'm very much in opposition to a lot of what the Israeli government does, but they're really not what the term Theocracy means. That claim is just ridiculous. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_references_to_G... |
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| ▲ | otikik 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You… don’t see it? | |
| ▲ | rf15 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | m8 they literally swear on the bible /s |
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| ▲ | baxtr 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is not how it played out if you talk to Iranians. They will tell you that the theocracy folks were a small minority of the entire resistance and first built a government of unity. Once in charge they started annihilating all other opposition factions one by one. | |
| ▲ | motorest 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Iran became a theocracy through a popular uprising, too. OP referred to democratic votes, whereas you talk about "popular uprising". Can you explain in your own words why you believe these are even comparable? | | |
| ▲ | brabel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Most people in the West seem to believe the removal of democratically elected, pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine after a popular uprising in 2014 was somehow democratic. That should show that depending on who is being ousted and your opinion on them, yes the two things can be comparable. | | |
| ▲ | motorest 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Most people in the West seem to believe the removal of democratically elected, pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine (...) You should seriously learn about Yanukovych before making any sort of claim regarding him. He was elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU and pro-western programme, only to turn out to be a Russian puppet that not only enforced policies completely contrary to his programme but also pushed Ukraine into a dictatorship. The "popular uprising" you glance over was actually months of demonstrations protesting Yanukovych unilateral rejection of the EU–Ukraine association agreement as ordered by Russia, which he campaigned and was elected for and contrary to Ukraine's parliament overwhelming approval. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan You're talking about the same Yanukovych who felt compelled to exile in Russia. > That should show that depending on who is being ousted (...) Those who favour freedom under democracies are indeed partial against dictators who try to destroy democratic states and deny people's rights, specially if it to serve the interests of other totalitarian regimes. | | |
| ▲ | lenkite 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | And all your arguments don't matter. He was a legally elected President - whose election was even EU Vetted by many, many observers and found to be completely valid. He could have been overthrown in the next elections and if that had happened, the Russian ethnic regions wouldn't have rebelled. You would have yet another corrupt Ukrainian President and no-one would have batted an eye. Life would have just continued as usual. But the US was far too eager to carry out regime change and so we have the dreadful situation today. | | |
| ▲ | stavros 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | But the GP is not saying the election wasn't valid, they're saying the guy was misrepresenting himself. I hate the US meddling as much as the next guy, but why is the solution to that problem "just endure four years of destruction until he leaves"? | | |
| ▲ | lenkite 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | All politicians "mispresent themselves". Kicking them out during elections is the way they are thrown out in a functioning democracy. Or do you believe Americans should storm the White House and beat up the President anytime a campaign promise is broken ? And one that is magnified by the funding and urging of a foreign government ? Such actions - which break the "deal of democracy" naturally lead to civil war - which is exactly what happened in Ukraine. | | |
| ▲ | stavros 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't care what Americans do, but I'd quite like to storm our parliament and kick out the current government. |
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| ▲ | m000 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > they're saying the guy was misrepresenting himself You mean like "peacemaker"/"America First" Donald Trump? > why is the solution to that problem "just endure four years of destruction until he leaves"? If Americans can wait out for the second Trump term to be over, Ukrainians could do it too for Yanukovych. | | | |
| ▲ | spacecadet 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I agree with you. |
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| ▲ | 9dev 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is an awful retelling of history. There was no revolution in Ukraine, but protests and demonstrations that were brutally crushed by government forces. The people persevered though and the president fled the country, leading to a formal and correct process of electing a new government after. The US didn’t have anything more to do with this. | | |
| ▲ | lenkite 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The US didn’t have anything more to do with this. Only if one is utterly blind and put fingers in their ears, can one truly believe that. Nuland's call was leaked where she was proudly deciding who would form the next government in Ukraine and who should be kept on the outside. And her personal choice of puppet: "Yats" did in-fact become the prime minister. Nuland was even handing out cookies to anti-Yanukovych protests for Christ's sake. Mc Cain actually flew in and congratulated the protesters. Imagine if that was happening in the US against a US President - members of foreign nation's government cheering on a coup and deciding who would be the next President. There would be Absolute War. | | |
| ▲ | 9dev 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | For those reading this and doubting: Read the call transcript for yourself, annotated by Jonathan Marcus of the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957 Yes, the USA is attempting to facilitate talks here. No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda. | | |
| ▲ | lenkite 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I also fully support not just reading the call transcript, but also listening to the leaked call so you get Nuland's firm tone. I would reserve very skeptical judgement on the "annotations". Those weren't part of the call. Listen to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUCCR4jAS3Y > No, that does not mean they have "decided" who is going to form the next government. That claim is just Russian propaganda Anyone with a rational brain who separates themselves from biases and emotions and carefully listens to the call would realize there is no propaganda involved here. Also, for better clarity of judgement, please perform a thought exercise and consider what would happen if a foreign government's members were discussing the personal choices , makeup and "talks" for members of the next American government. | | |
| ▲ | mopsi an hour ago | parent [-] | | > please perform a thought exercise and consider what would happen if a foreign government's members were discussing the personal choices , makeup and "talks" for members of the next American government. We can discuss potential successors to Xi right here on HN, and an outsider might say that "a forum frequented by Silicon Valley billionaires is picking the next leader of China". But that would be a huge misrepresentation of us and our influence. The fixation of Russian trolls on that single phone call reeks of desperation. During election season, I'd expect hundreds of such calls to be happening at any given moment between various officials, strategists, financiers, candidates, analysts, and many other people. |
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| ▲ | motorest an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > And all your arguments don't matter. He was a legally elected President - whose election was even EU Vetted by many, many observers and found to be completely valid. Yes, he was. What you are leaving out is the fact that in spite of being elected based on an enthusiastically pro-EU platform, it turned out he was a Russian agent and betrayed his mandate to enforce Kremlin's anti-west agenda and force himself upon Ukraine as another kremlin-controlled dictatorship. Except the people of Ukraine wanted none of that and protested against this betrayal, which culminated in the wannabe dictator seeking exile in Russia. Somehow you leave this out when you talk about basic democratic principles. Why is that? Is it out of sheer ignorance? What's also very odd is the way that you somehow try to portray anti-government protests as revolutions and regime changes, when this is a Hallmark of any democratic system: when a government doesn't follow through with their compromise and go directly against their mandate and people's will, they express their discontent and demand elections. How odd that when democracies reject Russia's interference, this is deemed as an anti-democratic coup. | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "He could have been overthrown in the next elections" Let me see if Erdogan can be overthrown in the next elections in Turkey. No US involvement either. If you live in a stable Western country, your trust in the next elections being fair and free is understandable, but in that case, refrain from any authoritative talk ("your arguments don't matter") about other places. In recent democracies that transitioned from totalitarian rule just a decade or two ago, elections are far easier to hijack than in the UK or Denmark. "no-one would have batted an eye" You cannot really make such a strong prediction about places like Ukraine, the Balkans, the Middle East etc. These are places where empires collide, and several crises in a century are almost a given. Anyway I am fairly glad that Ukraine didn't end up like Belarus did, a satellite state of Moscow. Anything is better than becoming a satellite state of Moscow. Most of us from behind the Iron Curtain would rather fight a war than submit to Moscow again. Interestingly, the Western leftists, who otherwise preach anti-colonialism from breakfast to sunset and then some, don't understand the same dynamic among white-majority nations. But it is still there. | | |
| ▲ | lenkite 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Did you somehow magically miss the part where Yanukovych's election was extensively observed and vetted by the EU and several other international bodies ? The EU’s own delegation — alongside the OSCE and other bodies — stated that the election was "free, fair, and transparent". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ukrainian_presidential_el... "Over 700 observers from EU member states participated, in addition to OSCE/ODIHR, the EU Parliament, PACE, and other international delegations" The Guardian reported EU-led observers praised the vote as "fair and truly competitive" noting only "minor irregularities” that did not affect overall results". "After the second round of the election international observers and the OSCE called the election transparent and honest." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/08/viktor-yanukov... | | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Did you somehow magically miss the part" Could you tone down your arrogance, please? I was talking about the next election. You expressed your conviction that Yanukovich could be removed in the next election, remember? I expressed my doubt about iron-cladness of such future election. Strongmen-like leaders in fresh democracies have a lot of methods how to win next elections without actually winning them. | | |
| ▲ | lenkite 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ok, but I am really incredulous now - If he won the next election even after extensive vetting by EU and a plethora of international observers who called the elections "fair and transparent", then he has completely won the seat of the Presidency. On what basis does your personal opinion overrule the result of democracy ? | | |
| ▲ | mopsi 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The fact that someone won elections doesn't mean they get to stay until the end of their term no matter what they do. Yanukovych had over 100 people killed in a violent crackdown on protests, then fled to Russia as he was about to be imprisoned. On 21 February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted 328-0 to hold snap elections to replace Yanukovych before the end of his term. Not a single member of his own party supported him or voted against the decision. He was replaced through general elections held a few months later. This is exactly how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_election |
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| ▲ | Narretz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There's no way of knowing that Russia wouldn't have incited the "rebellions" anyway. Once the writing was on the wall that the majority of Ukrainians didn't want to be Russia's puppets, Putin would likely have acted one way or the other. Why take chances? |
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| ▲ | WesolyKubeczek 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes it was. Democracy is not only about casting your vote once every few years and then shutting up and staying put, it’s also about holding your elected representatives accountable. | |
| ▲ | lawn 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | How nice of you to insert some Russian bullshit narrative into the discussion. |
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| ▲ | tsimionescu 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Because both are representations of the rule and self-determination of the people. Popular uprisings are comparable to direct voting in terms of expressing the power of the people (though of course have other major differences in terms of violence, rule of law, etc). | | |
| ▲ | motorest 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Because both are representations of the rule and self-determination of the people. No, not really. Having a radical group remove another totalitarian ruler doesn't automatically grant them legitimacy or any arguments involving "self determination of people". |
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| ▲ | ngcazz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | your selective definition of democracy accommodates a country - whose Basic Law 2018 declared it a Jewish supremacist state - where 50% of the population doesn't have the right to vote, land ownership, or travel on the same roads - and faces 99% conviction rates in military, not civil, courts - where parties can be banned directly by government decision if it arbitrarily deems them to be anti-Jewish | |
| ▲ | hiddencost 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Liar | | |
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| ▲ | vixen99 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not any longer but one might have thought of Britain as a theocracy at some point in the recent past insofar as members of the governing party would have put down Christian in the box marked Religion. On the other hand, in 2025, formal occasions in the UK usually take place in Christian cathedrals and churches. The King (albeit with no executive powers in the Government) is head of the Church of England - the 'Supreme Governor of the Church of England'. Interesting that 20% of Israelis do not believe in a deity. 18% are Muslim. In Iran, Jews are 0.03% of the population. | |
| ▲ | CactusRocket 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > In what sense Israel is not a theocracy. I find this very disingenuous because the person you replied to was talking only about Iran, and stating that Iran is a theocracy in their opinion. They never mentioned anything about Iran, let alone stating that Israel isn't a theocracy. So asking this question, this way, is quite strange in my opinion. | | |
| ▲ | amenhotep 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | They said "theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first". If this is true - and it is their stated position - then, since Israel has nukes, either they are not a theocracy or they are begging to be nuked. The commenter has, I think reasonably, concluded that the other commenter doesn't think Israel is begging to be nuked, and is therefore addressing the apparent contradiction. It seems entirely genuous. |
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| ▲ | djfivyvusn 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Who cares if they are? They're not out here calling for the destruction of all the Islamic states. Well, at least not the ones not already actively bombing them. | |
| ▲ | motorest 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Israel defines itself as a "jewish" state (...) I think the "Jewish state" refers to how the country serves as the homeland for the jewish people, not how they force a religion upon others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_state Israel's legal definition is "Jewish and Democratic state", which explicitly ensures "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_and_democratic_state | | |
| ▲ | CalChris 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The Basic Law (their Constitution) of Israel defines it as a Jewish state. Its first page says: The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish People, in which the State of Israel was established.
(b) The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
(c) The realization of the right to national self- determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.
Not irrespective of religion, exclusive to the Jewish People. | | |
| ▲ | spwa4 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you have a problem with laws defining this sort of thing, you're going to have problems with the constitution of any muslim-majority country. Including ... of course Palestine. Hamas/Gaza: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: O’ Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him,” And the west bank's government pays pensions according to how many Jews you hurt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_... (No worries the "parliamentary democracy" that the WB is - hah! - promises to stop that now. Well, except for the payments) But this is a general problem with all muslim-majority nations. Take an extremely moderate one - Morocco - defines itself as: "A sovereign Muslim State, attached to its national unity and to its territorial integrity, the Kingdom of Morocco intends to preserve," |
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| ▲ | tdeck 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | With such a commitment to equality it's hard to believe policies like this slipped through https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_the_Galilee | | |
| ▲ | gadilif 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's a bad law (although somewhat covered with 'good intentions', it does have a scent of racism which shouldn't exist in state laws).
However, note that the outcome was the unintentional creation of Jewish/Arabs communities in the Galilee, which actually help bring Jews and Arabs together.
It is also important to note that Arab Israelis have full rights as citizens, have representatives in the parliament and even were a part of the previous coalition. This, of course, is not the case for Palestinians in the occupied territories, and this issue MUST be resolved (one- or two-state solution, either way the current situation is unbearable).
With that, the current coalition does include extremists, and many (according to recent polls, >60%) in Israel want to see them replaced. |
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| ▲ | hiddencost 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Absurd. |
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| ▲ | simonh 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not so much them being a theocracy IMHO. It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel. Put those Israeli shoes on. There's a state armed with ballistic missiles in easy range of you, they have the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium, recently acquired more advanced centrifuges, they have the uranium already enriched far beyond what's necessary for civilian use, they have far more of it than they credibly need for such civilian use, and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you. How well would you sleep at night? | | |
| ▲ | McAlpine5892 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel. And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary. It absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people are taking sides on a religious war. Stay out. Stay far out. There is no winning. There is no stopping the conflict. Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. The only thing to see is human atrocities as far as the eye in the name of <your god of choice>. > There's a state ... [that has] ... the facilities necessary to enrich weapons grade Uranium Do they? It's oft repeated. But I vaguely remember this country being sold on an Iraq invasion due to nukes. Nukes that never existed and never were close to existing. This wasn't a simple miscalculation. The nukes were entirely and knowingly fictional. And that's just one example of a bullshit made-up reason this nation has started a war to waste lives. How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night? Why should I believe my country today? Why is today the day of all days that the truth is finally being told? Why is today the day that god is real and I should jump in on the bloodshed? Your masters are lying to you, to their benefit. They didn't wake up today and decide to be honest. | | |
| ▲ | lokimedes 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Those with the spirit to strike, will always dominate those with a mind to moderate. | |
| ▲ | GlacierFox 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | _How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?_ Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up. | |
| ▲ | imperfect_blue 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel. > And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary. How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction. > How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night? Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can? | | |
| ▲ | oa335 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian They clearly and openly state that they want to force Palestinians off of their land and are using violence towards that end. If there were a button to get rid of Palestinians, Israelis would “hit it twice”. https://youtu.be/BkP78hyLl4w | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian Uh? So can you explain the genocide? |
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| ▲ | KnightSaysNi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Every side has an ordained right to blow the others off the face of the planet. What? Israel is 2000 Kms away from Iran, and would want nothing do to with them if not for Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan and policy... > Do they? The IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, hardly a "bullshit made-up excuse" | |
| ▲ | adastra22 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East. Support for Israel extends beyond religious justifications. | | |
| ▲ | McAlpine5892 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's not about democracy. If it were, we wouldn't have overthrown countless democratically elected leaders throughout South America during the 20th Century. Our elected leaders constantly attempt to expand their own power. To maximally punish whistleblowers. Our election system is ran by a duopoly who exerts extreme power over those voicing alternative views and opinions. About democracy, it is not. Let's say it was though. What gives us the right to blow other countries off the face of the planet? Are we somehow so much better than everyone else because we believe we're democratic? We don't even rank in the top 10 most democratic countries. We throw more people in jail than China. Per capita AND total overall. We throw more kids in jail than any other first world country [0]. Surely, democracy does not automagically lend to treating people fairly. We have enough problems in our own damn democracy to worry about. Crazy to be starting wars to "help" someone who never asked for it. Forcing violence upon those who never consented is absolutely abhorrent. [0] https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/afric... | |
| ▲ | oliwarner 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Whose fault is that? The US and Russia have propped and warred every angle to extract as much oil as possible. The instability maintains a heavy flow of refugees into Europe, destabilising the freedoms they have there and pushing the politics further right. The sudden switch yesterday from "they can't make nukes" to "they're a fortnight away from ICBMs" felt a little too reminiscent of Iraq twenty years ago. If we want a stable Middle East, we have to stop bombing the shit out of it, and invest. Negotiate fairly for resources. Offer them a future. And demand Israel stop committing war crimes. | | |
| ▲ | eptcyka 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I wonder if the _negotiate fairly_ option is viable after countless generations have been bombed. | | |
| ▲ | oliwarner 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | We either try, or resign to slowly killing each other until one does figure out how to wipe the other out forever. Forced separation only deepens the hatred. |
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| ▲ | simonh 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It can be simultaneously true that Iran is sitting on a huge pike of precursor materials for nuclear weapons, and is not currently actually making bombs. Last week she was emphasising the latter, now she’s emphasising the former. Disingenuous? Sure. Trump and his people are children in the back of a car that found mummy’s gun in her purse. They have no idea what they are doing. I understand what Israel is doing but the US administration are clueless and rudderless. |
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| ▲ | throwaway7839 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel is the only country with tiered citizenship. It is the only country that has constitutional preference for an ethnic group instead of equality of all subjects/citizens. It is also the only country with automatic citizenship based on religion. It is also the only country with nuclear weapons but not part of NPT. Even North Korea is a member of NPT. The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore. | | |
| ▲ | packetlost 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > The myth of Democracy is just that, a myth. It doesn’t work anymore. That is a very strong claim that needs very strong evidence. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway97894 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You have been provided with a list of items that undermines the claim of democracy, the evidence is also pretty strong. What else do you want? |
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| ▲ | adastra22 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The 18% of Israeli citizens that are Muslim are 100% equal to their Jewish brethren under the law. There is no tiered citizenship. | | |
| ▲ | chgs 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | https://www.timesofisrael.com/supreme-court-rejects-israeli-... Looks theocratic to me | | |
| ▲ | adastra22 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don’t think you understand what you linked to. That is about government census forms that track ethnicity, same as any other country. Nationality here doesn’t mean citizenship, but rather something closer to “tribe.” Some well meaning citizens said “I want to check Israeli rather than Jew, Druze, Arab, etc.” Except Israeli is not a nationality in this sense. Nor is Jewish, on this form, a religious identification. It is a way of tracking, for census reasons, something closer to ethnicity. Not for nefarious purposes, but just to track demographics. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway97894 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That is a very dishonest interpretation not only because the national registry is not a mere question of census but of identity, but because the Supreme Court clearly outlines that it in black and white that it is about the question of Jewish supremacy. from the article: > the court explained that doing so would have “weighty implications” on the State of Israel and could pose a danger to Israel’s founding principle: to be a Jewish state for the Jewish people. |
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| ▲ | dreghgh 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There's only 3 problems with this old claim. 1. You have to define 'Israel' quite carefully to make it work. Palestinians in East Jerusalem cannot vote in Israeli elections. Is East Jerusalem part of Israel or not? 2. There are several other democracies in the Middle East, for example Iraq and Lebanon. 3. Some of the countries which aren't democratic, would be democratic, except that representative governments were overthrown by the United States, in part to enforce cooperation with Israel, against the wishes of most of the people in the country. For example, Egypt. | |
| ▲ | CalChris 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran was democratic … until we overthrew them. | | | |
| ▲ | hopelite 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You seem to believe “democracy” is some kind of magic spell or something? This “democracy” just perpetrated and are continuing to perpetrate the worst kind of wanton and sadistic genocide in full view of the world and are doing it in high definition and with impunity. America is supposedly also a democracy and we just in fact bombed a place objectively without any provocation, in violation of our own supreme law, and being utterly counter to American interests, because an alien and foreign interest group has a stranglehold on America. Democracy is not some magic word that justifies things | |
| ▲ | alfiedotwtf 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran used to be a democracy in the Middle East until the US got involved | |
| ▲ | compiler_queen 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Support for Israel extends beyond religious justifications Yes, it extends that support to cover apartheid colonial occupation, more-than-likely genocide by all the accepted definitions, and the usual smattering of targeting civilians, executing paramedics in marked ambulances and ethic cleansing. | |
| ▲ | reillyse 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A shining beacon of democracy. | |
| ▲ | wun0ne 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel, the democratic country whose prime minister appears to be deliberately prolonging the current conflict in Gaza and starting a new war with Iran to avoid facing corruption charges? | |
| ▲ | Hikikomori 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bad hasbara. | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel has elections. So does Russia. Is Russia a democracy? | |
| ▲ | fluorinerocket 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I could really care less what theit form of government is | | |
| ▲ | petre 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > starting a new war with Iran Hamas has started in on the 7th of october 2023, effectively rolling back years of negotiations done by Yasser Arafat. Where do you think they've got the weapons from? Netanyahu is no better, but they offered him the perfect motive for a response. | | |
| ▲ | dreghgh 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Where do you think they've got the weapons from? Ultimately, from the United States taxpayer. Who supply the Egyptian military government, who turn a small proportion over to the Islamists to keep them from too much rabble-rousing. Who smuggle them to Hamas. Both Qatar and Iran supply money and other forms of support to Hamas. But no RPG makes it into Gaza (across a shorter than 10 mile border) without the Egyptian military sort of knowing about it. | | |
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| ▲ | throw310822 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | All this talk about nuclear weapons is purposefully misleading. Iran had agreements in place to keep its nuclear program under strict and thorough international checks, and was currently negotiating a new one. The original deal was scrapped on Netanyahu's request, and the bombing was started by Netanyahu to prevent a new one. Israel doesn't fear Iran's nukes. Israel fears an economically functional Iran and uses the wmd excuse to sabotage it as much as possible. The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted. | | |
| ▲ | nine_k 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Realistically, a secular Iran would be the only real ally of Israel in the region. This is how it was under the shah, until 1979. Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now. (Edit: typo) | | |
| ▲ | dttze 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You’re like the gusanos that say Cuba was so much better before the revolution. Without mentioning it was only great for the landowning slavers. Why do you think there was a revolution? | | |
| ▲ | HK-NC 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Well I'd argue 50% of the population got a raw deal in the revolution at least. | |
| ▲ | nine_k 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Cubans kept massively supporting Fidel for quite some time, and quite explicitly, even through the disastrous Communist economic policies. Iranians keep protesting; last few years have seen several large protests, involving hundreds of thousands, and continuing for months. The popularity just isn't there. Regarding revolutions, it's quite often that a relatively small group of like-minded people capture the control, and the majority is weakly supporting them, or is even weakly opposed but complies. The French revolution was mostly about some nobility wanting to remove the monarchy that oppressed them, along with the rest; most of the population wasn't overtly anti-monarchy, and not even covertly so, but it did not like the monarchy's pressure either. The Russian revolution was "communist" and "proletarian", but even by their own Marxist accounting, proletarians were less than 10% of Russian population, and communists, much fewer still. Nevertheless, they subdued most of the Russian empire. The Iranian revolution was also done by a group of highly religious people who were fed up with the shah's secularization reforms. The shah, AFAICT, was a guy a bit like Putin, or Saudi kings: efficient and geared towards prosperity of the country, but quite authoritarian. The fact that e.g. the educated urban population in Iran wasn't happy about authoritarianism does not imply that the same people were (or are) huge fans of theocracy. Actually, the theocracy ended up even more oppressive. | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The Cuban revolution was more of a coup than a widespread national uprising. It was a blind alley anyway. Zero countries that embraced Marxism-Leninism were able to reach prosperity on that ideology. Meanwhile, a lot of desperately poor countries of the 1950s are nowadays reasonably well of, on the basis of a normal, regulated market economy. | | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Do you have sources for all of this fantasy spin on history? | | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | AFAIK Castro had never more than 3 thousand armed men at his side, and often much fewer, down to lower hundreds, spending much of the protracted conflict hiding in the countryside. A revolution is something in which a significant part of a nation actively participates, not something that almost the entire population sits out passively. Of course we can debate what is the necessary fraction, but 3000 militants isn't a big deal in a country of several million. Every Iraqi cleric in 2010 was able to put together a bigger militia than that. |
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| ▲ | lostlogin 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > This is how it was under the shah, until 1979. Sort of? The US played a role in that shit show and it wasn’t all happy days under the Shah. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution | | |
| ▲ | nine_k 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not "happy", but Iran was quite a bit more sober, not hostile towards Israel, and relatively secular. (Similarly, China under Deng Xiaoping was not a paragon of political freedom at all, but it was quite a bit more sober than under Mao Zedong. The US administration had tons of shortcomings under president Biden, but it was in quite a bit less of disarray than under president Trump.) |
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| ▲ | praptak 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Shah was a dictator propped up by US. There's no going back to these times. | | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, Israel is currently engaged in genocide, how would it be good for it to benefit enormously? | | |
| ▲ | foxglacier 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | People keep saying genocide but has it been established objectively? I seem to remember the ICJ deciding they weren't, but that was some time ago. | | |
| ▲ | qwery an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | People keep questioning the definition of genocide, as if finding some technical distinction will absolve the perpetrators. If you actually care about international law, you might be interested to know that the ICC has issued (standing) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Israeli Minister for Defense for various crimes against humanity and the use of starvation in warfare. | |
| ▲ | tdeck 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > ? I seem to remember the ICJ deciding they weren't Is this some reality distortion field? This never happened. Instead the ICJ issued multiple explicit orders to Israel that Israel has violated and the genocide case is still ongoing. | |
| ▲ | Krasnol 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Who cares about ICJ or any International Law these days anymore? Yeah, I mean we can still use it (or it's slowness and uselessness) to hide behind it but the facts are on the table. Gaza looks like post-war Germany at this point. People ARE starving. Meanwhile Israel expands to the east. Also illegally. |
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| ▲ | ivell 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The worst possible outcome for them is Iran proving it has no nuclear weapons at all and having its sanctions lifted. Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak. | | |
| ▲ | compsciphd an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | its not circumstantial. Even Iran has publicly said that they have enriched to 60%. 60% is not needed for civilian uses and only useful for research in how to make it go boom. | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Remember all that evidence about iraq? Remember the british guy who worked at the ministry and went to the news saying there was no evidence and then suicided without leaving his own fingerprints on the weapon? |
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| ▲ | energy123 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran has violated the NPT so many times at this stage that no good faith observer can say what you've said here with a straight face. This is just using words to persuade for political purposes, it is not analysis. | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Iran has violated the NPT because there were agreements in place for it to respect it, and the agreements have been violated by the other side. An action that must have consequences, otherwise there is no point in making deals with anyone. |
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| ▲ | petre 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sure, they're making weapons grade uranium to exhibit it in the Museum of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense in Teheran. |
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| ▲ | FilosofumRex 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | 9dev 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | These positions are not mutually exclusive though. You can both be in favor of stripping Irans ability to build nukes and oppose Israel’s settlements. | | |
| ▲ | AlecSchueler 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Israel's settlements are the reason Iran feels the need for such developments though. I can oppose IRA violence and British imperialism at the same time but if we're having a reasonable conversation we have to recognise that British colonial force in Ireland is what drove people to form the IRA. | | |
| ▲ | shusaku 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Israel's settlements are the reason Iran feels the need for such developments though. Even Iran’s leaders would laugh in your face at such a naive statement, you should reconsider your media diet | |
| ▲ | mrkstu 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You know that isn’t true. Israel could withdraw to the 1969 borders and Iran would be just as dedicated to destroying it. | | |
| ▲ | AlecSchueler 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure how that contradicts what I'm saying. To continue the analogy that's like going back to 1900 and saying Britain could pull out of Ireland except for Ulster and there'd still be people calling for further decolonisation. |
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| ▲ | spiderfarmer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Iran is stupid trying to covertly get to a nuclear bomb, Israel is very stupid with those illegal settlements. It’s costing them both a lot of sympathy. |
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| ▲ | ivell 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My understanding is that most countries support a two nation solution. I have not seen any Iranian statement that accepts this. On the other hand I have seen them consistently calling for outright destruction of Israel. Given their declared intend of destruction, no one in right mind would allow them the capability of destruction. | |
| ▲ | dlahoda 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | just exactly predating goverment was friendly with israel: https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496386/Pahlavi-and-Israel-t... so what exact goverment your arr referring? | |
| ▲ | dartharva 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Anyone who unironically attributes any land to be Muslim, Jewish or of any other religion must be immediately dealt with. Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion. | |
| ▲ | dismalaf 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Occupation of "Muslim lands"? Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities. Before the Ottomans and various Islamic conquests it was almost entirely Christian/Roman (as was the whole Middle East). Before that Jewish. And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there. Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN which you reference. | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > and a fairly even mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims False. The population in 1800 was ~90% Muslim, ~8% Christian. > let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN The UN had no authority to partition other people's land. | | |
| ▲ | sgt 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Wrong. They were given the authority by general consensus after WW2. Maybe a poor choice, but it's not at all the responsibility of current Israelis to think about what their grandparents did. For a Gen Z Israeli, there's only one country. | | | |
| ▲ | fastball 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If they don't control it, it's not the "other people's" land either. Land belongs to whoever controls it. That's it. That is all it will ever be. If there is not some higher power (e.g. the UN, who you say does not have authority), you have no recourse. No matter what land it is or who they are: nobody currently living was there first. The only claim is always "I was the last to control it". But none of us are the first. | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The censuses were always flip-flopping back and forth, until the 1880s. You cherry picked one nice one, but I could check pick over half a dozen censuses that show Jewish majority during the 19th century - no less than the amount of censuses that promote the other competing narrative. And all the later censuses, after 1880, show Jewish majority. That was over three decades before the fall of the Ottoman empire. Source for census data:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerusalem
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| ▲ | motorest 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | From wikipedia's article on the history of Palestine: > "Most of Palestine's population, estimated to be around 200,000 in the early years of Ottoman rule, lived in villages. The largest cities were Gaza, Safad and Jerusalem, each with a population of around 5,000–6,000." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's in the 16th century. Almost no Jews at that time either. | | |
| ▲ | motorest 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > That's in the 16th century. OP's point was "Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities." What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then? > Almost no Jews at that time either. What a wild claim: almost no Jews in places like Jerusalem? Please cite whatever source you have to make such an extraordinary claim. | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > What are you trying to dispute here? That the territory of today's Israel was sparsely populated back then, or that the Ottoman Empire existed back then Exactly the part that you left out: that the Jewish presence (before zionist immigration began) was of any relevance in the demography of the region. |
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| ▲ | dotancohen 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I've never understood the argument of Muslim Land or Arab Land. If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that? Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1]. How does that become suddenly Muslim Land? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Jerus... | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Jerusalem was Jewish majority in the time of the Ottoman Empire [1] (Links a page that shows the exact opposite) > If one were to call Britain White Man's Land and start a terror campaign against African, Asian, and Arab immigrants, would the world community accept that? Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleanse 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades? | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Links to a page that shows the exact opposite
This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources. All the censuses in the decades before the fall of the Ottoman empire show a Jewish majority. And for the century preceding that, the censuses flipped back and forth. > Isn't that exactly what happened, i.e. Israel declared half of the land "Jewish land" and proceeded to ethnically cleans 800 thousand palestinians with whom they had been living side by side in the previous decades?
No. The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish) and the majority of the rest Arab (not Muslim, not Palestinian, and not Egyptian or Jordanian). The Arab states rejected this, and opened a war with the newly formed Israel. Many Israeli leaders pleaded with the Arab residents not to heed the Arab states' calls to evacuate. The situation in Haifa is well documented, I know this from living with Arabs in Haifa two decades ago. They tell how the Haifa mayor pleaded with their families to remain in 1948. | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > This isn't Reddit. Many people here actually do read sources. Exactly. The Ottoman rule of Palestine spans 400 years, and the graph at the top of the page you linked shows that Jews became a majority in Jerusalem only at the very end of it, following zionist immigration at the end of the 19th century. > The UN designated the malaria-infested marshes Israeli (not Jewish) The problem is that this isn't reddit and people actually read the sources. This is the text of the Partition Plan: "Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem, set forth in Part III of this Plan, shall come into existence..." https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/res181.asp | | |
| ▲ | loandbehold 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Why do you have such a problem with Zionist immigration that made Jerusalem a Jewish-majority city? It was legal immigration allowed by Ottoman Empire. Do you see Muslims immigrating to Europe in the same light? Many previously "white" cities in Europe are now Muslim. Should Europeans call it "Muslim occupation of white land"? That sounds pretty racist. Why double standard? | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah no, I have no problem with it, as much as Palestinians had little problem with the tens, and then hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to their land. Of course if the UN were suddenly to declare that half of my country is now assigned to them only to build their, say, Arab state- then I would be quite pissed. Wouldn't you? |
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| ▲ | dotancohen 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | From Wikipedia: > The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903 ... An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated.
Jerusalem was already Jewish majority before 1881. And the large waves of the movement were towards the end, not towards the beginning. | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, as we said, zionist immigration to Palestine began at the end of the 19th century. Nothing to do with the small historical Jewish population of Palestine or Jerusalem. |
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| ▲ | FilosofumRex 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes indeed, if white British people were expelled from their lands and their homes confiscated by anyone, Norse, Germanic or Russian, it'd be considered ethnic cleansing and a war crime. The jews of Ottoman era were Sephardic and Mizrahi jews of N. Africa, not the Yiddish speaking Ashkenazis of Germany, France and Russia. | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Thank you for your support. After the UN divided the holy land into an Israeli and an Arab state, the Arabs began their ethnic cleaning campaign. That is why there were zero Jews left in Gaza or the West Bank after the war. The war that was started with the stated goal of eliminating the Jews. And note that despite Arab calls for the Arabs to evacuate the holy land, it remained 20% Arab. And let's not get started on the Jews in the other 20 plus Arab states. What at happened to them? | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Ashkenazis
A word which literally means "from the Levant", where Ashkenaz (Noah's descendent) had settled. | |
| ▲ | UltraSane 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Like how the Arab countries expelled Jews after Israel was founded? The double standard about Israel and Arab colonization and ethnic cleansing is absurd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_... |
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| ▲ | dismalaf 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I actually do know the "Muslim lands" reference. Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever. It's a conquest tactic. It gets slightly reframed to be tolerable for westerners by invoking the idea that they're "indigenous", when they're largely Arabs who committed genocide against the previous peoples. https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2016/8/12/israel-sau... | | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > when they're largely Arabs who committed genocide against the previous peoples. So what area are arabs from? You know there are arab jews and christians right? | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula. After they accepted Islam in the 7th century, they turned to conquest other areas. This is all well documented in Arab sources, they are very proud of this. | | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | >they accepted Islam in the 7th century Oh i didn't realize we're going back more than a millennia. Well, in that case every modern nation state is the product of one form of genocide or another - the USA being the worst genocidal state, going back just 500 years. >The Arab culture, identity, and distinct racial features formed in the Arabian peninsula Seems silly to me to claim a land that "your people" inhabited centuries and millennia ago, as it honestly seems silly to me talk about "racial features" when talking about humans. Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"? | | |
| ▲ | dotancohen 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Arab culture? Are you telling me an arab jew, muslim, christian, druze and aheist have the same culture by virtue of being of the same "race"?
Not by virtue of being the same race, but by virtue of being the offspring of parents who are proud of their heritage and teach their children.Denying the existence of Arab culture, of which the Arabs are (rightly, in my opinion) very proud of, is racism. Not everybody has the same values and customs as you do. | | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Can you mention one cultural trait that an arab jew, muslim, and atheist would share? That's like saying there is a european culture, it's nonsense. | | |
| ▲ | vntok 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Europe | | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Whilst there are a great number of perspectives that can be taken on the subject, it is impossible to form a single, all-embracing concept of European culture." Literally the second sentence in that wiki | | |
| ▲ | vntok 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you frequently stop reading articles two sentences in? It's amazing how much knowledge and intelligence you must be missing. Please do keep reading past. The next sentence (literally sentence #3) gives you: Nonetheless, there are core elements which are generally agreed upon as forming the cultural foundation of modern Europe. One list of these elements given by K. Bochmann includes: And then a detailed list of shared-culture-related items. - A common cultural and spiritual heritage derived from Greco-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, the Renaissance, its Humanism, the political thinking of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the developments of Modernity, including all types of socialism;[5][4] - A rich and dynamic material culture, parts of which have been extended to the other continents as the result of industrialization and colonialism during the "Great Divergence";[5] - A specific conception of the individual expressed by the existence of, and respect for, a legality that guarantees human rights and the liberty of the individual;[5] - A plurality of states with different political orders, which share new ideas with one another.[5] - Respect for peoples, states, and nations outside Europe. And then there are 15 categories from Music to Science to History, listing cultural similitudes or shared values. |
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| ▲ | AlecSchueler 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Religious Muslims believe any land ever controlled by Muslims must remain Muslim forever. What are you basing this on? Are "religious" Muslims some kind of True Scots Muslims? I'm willing to bet that if I speak to any of my Muslim neighbours none of them will agree with this. | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well if you go back enough… all english people are actually vikings who committed genocide against the britons. And all swedish people are steppe barbarians who committed genocide against the local sami people. | | |
| ▲ | dismalaf 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Source on Swedes being steppe barbarians? Most historians agree that Vikings originated in Scandinavia. Sami peoples originated in northern Russia and moved to the furthest north regions of Scandinavia. The Vikings were also more concerned with seafaring and raiding to the south and west and all the history I know of is that they coexisted mostly peacefully (Vikings would trade with the Sami). Conflict arose centuries after the Viking age. |
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| ▲ | FilosofumRex 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So why was it called Palestine Partition Plan, and not Israeli partition plan: "Palestine Partition Plan" is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), adopted on November 29, 1947. This resolution, officially titled "Future Government of Palestine," recommended the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem and its environs to be placed under a special international regime." | | |
| ▲ | fastball 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Palestine" is a term which pre-dates Islam (coming from the Greek "Palaistine"), so I don't think you are making the point you are trying to make. | | |
| ▲ | adastra22 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yup, Palestine is a name for the land, not the people. It is a Roman era corruption of Phoenician. | | |
| ▲ | dismalaf 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, Philistine (and all the variants) comes from a Greek word for "uncouth" and is a word for the ancient Philistines given by their neighbours; it's unknown what the Philistines called themselves. The Philistines weren't the Phoenicians, they were more recent invaders (possibly some of the "Sea People"). For one, the Philistines were Aegean and the Phoenicians were Semitic. The Philistines also disappeared (either killed or assimilated) while the Phoenicians spawned Carthage (the ones in the Levant probably just assimilated over time as many powers controlled the area after them). It only became the name for the land after the Bar Kockba revolt, the Romans named it such specifically to spite the Jews. And then it stuck when various powers controlled the land over time (Romans/East Romans aka. Byzantines, Caliphate, Ottomans, British). |
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| ▲ | AlecSchueler 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN Who proposed the Balfour Declaration 30 years prior? | |
| ▲ | iamacyborg 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there. Presumably during one of the frequent rounds of forceful expulsion from European states. | |
| ▲ | woodpanel 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Exactly. Ill intended actors (Soviets, competing European interests, Islamists etc.) even propped up the propaganda fiction about the "evil" Crusaders, while in fact the Crusaders fought against colonization. The entire north of Africa, as well as the Levante and Asia Minor was still 80-90% Christian when Crusaders came. |
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| ▲ | golol 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can oppose something or you can create terorrist militias to attack Israel and destabilize its neighboring countries. | | |
| ▲ | FilosofumRex 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your "terrorists" militias predate formation of Islamic Republic of Iran, in 1979. Yasser Arafat, and all other Palestinian liberators were also labeled as terrorists. Can you name one Palestinian who has fought against Israel's occupation and is not considered a terrorist by you? https://jcpa.org/the-parallels-between-yahya-sinwar-and-yass... | | |
| ▲ | UltraSane 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | All of that Palestine resistance to Israel has accomplished nothing except misery for Palestinians. | | | |
| ▲ | dontTREATonme 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Can you name a single Palestinian who has actually moved the needle on a functioning democratic Palestinian state? Every single current and former Palestinian leader has been heavily theocratic, has pledged to kill Jews wherever they are and has never considered sharing any of whatever power he’s gotten with anyone else. | | |
| ▲ | AlecSchueler 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Do you stop to ask what creates the environment where the most extreme views flourish and gain traction? | | |
| ▲ | dontTREATonme 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I always marvel at the extreme racism required to so thoroughly dehumanize an entire population. | |
| ▲ | Ray20 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Islamist majority? | | |
| ▲ | AlecSchueler 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nope, Islamism is an extreme position so that gets you no further in the answering the question. What set the stage for an Islamist majority? Again I assert that extreme politics don't develop in vacuums. |
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| ▲ | tdeck 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is like complaining that Nat Turner didn't move the needle on moving the US toward universal suffrage. | |
| ▲ | orwin 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No? The issue US had with the PLF is that it was controlled by Marxist. the theocratic pro-palestine movements didn't start until the 90s. |
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| ▲ | edanm 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Iran opposition to Israel's occupation of Muslim lands and territories, predates the current government of Iran. And yet, the previous government of Iran had friendly relations with Israel, as do some other Arab and Muslim countries. The US also has friendly relations with countries with whom it disagrees vehemently, and that do (IMO) far worse things than Israel does. | |
| ▲ | fortran77 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A complete inversion of history. What an insane take! | |
| ▲ | pbhjpbhj 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel occupies lands belonging to the Biblical patriarch Jacob. That was something like 1800 BCE, two and a half millennia before Mohammed. Islam refers to Jacob, as does the Torah/Old Testament as "Israel". I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either. | | |
| ▲ | bambax 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's a ridiculous position. We can't organize today's world based on who was where 4 millennia ago. (If we did, most if not all countries would immediately cease to exist, starting of course with the US but not limited to them.) | |
| ▲ | samaltmanfried 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Assuming this claim were true, which it isn't, the modern Israelis have genetically nothing in common with the Jews of the old testament. They don't have the same culture, religion, language or genetics. | |
| ▲ | ivell 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I find historical claims like this not very convincing. 1800 BCE looked very different from today and if people from old civilizations start claiming their land, we would not see any end of wars. Should Italy claim most of Europe because Romans had it under their control? | |
| ▲ | quietbritishjim 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You make it sound like the dispute is about who has some ancient religious right to the land. It's true that both sides claim that but it's totally disingenuous to pretend that is the reason for so much Arab anger. People still have a living memory of specific properties in specific locations that they were forced out of and are now occupied by other families, often with some of their relatives killed in the process That applies both to places in Israel proper (displaced in 1940s to 1960s) and to Gaza and the West Bank (in the time since then). Even before the most recent war in Gaza, any Palestinian could be forced out of their home at any moment by an Israeli settler with no recourse. |
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| ▲ | kikimora 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Last time I checked history books said Britain donated land to Jews. At the time Britain took house land there were no state and no nation called Palestinians, just tribes. Since then Palestinians formed as a nation. So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is. | | |
| ▲ | bambax 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Britain donated land to Jews Land it didn't own. Most people can be very generous with what they don't have. | | |
| ▲ | kikimora 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Agree, but my point is in the question how to untangle the mess we have today. |
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| ▲ | chgs 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are arguing in favour of the land allocations in 1948? | | |
| ▲ | kikimora 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’m asking for realistic ideas how to deal jews and palestinians occupying same land, hating each other and having no where to go from that land. |
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| ▲ | LtWorf 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you start from made up premises, the conclusion is also made up. Try to read a non fantasy sionist history book… | | |
| ▲ | kikimora 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | There is no conclusion on my part. There is an ask for reasonable ideas how to untangle the mess between jews and palestinians. | | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | If you start from made up premises, you will not be able to judge "reasonable ideas". |
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| ▲ | compiler_queen 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > How well would you sleep at night? Well, considering that Israeli's are occupying land that rightfully belongs to someone else, I'd say not very well indeed. It's the final major European colonial outpost, and its fighting hard not to go the way of Algeria, Kenya, Malaya and a long long list of others. | | |
| ▲ | elcritch 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Even if you believe Israelis don’t have a right to the land, it’s still not a colonial outpost. That’s just lazy European and American self important intellectualizing in my opinion. First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries. Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations. The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers. It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced. Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return. | |
| ▲ | kanbara 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | you do know that jews come from the current state of israel right? and that they lived there before the founding of said state? and that, no, neither group of 7M people are going to pack up and leave. | | |
| ▲ | compiler_queen 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is no more relevant than the guys in the OAS banging the table and claiming 2M Frenchmen have always lived in Algeria. It's not the age of exploration any more, you can no more rock up on someone else's patch, declare it terra nullis and start building condos. What's worse again, is trying to make it some religious thing... this book here says I own all you guy's land because the book says God gave it to us guys and not yous. |
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| ▲ | mykowebhn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel. I believe this is very important to highlight, and, unfortunately, many Iranians will suffer because of the Iranian government's views. But I do believe there are viewpoints held on both sides that can make achieving peace in that region extremely difficult. Consider these two video excerpts (You only need to watch about 10 seconds for each) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYoa9hI3CXg&t=1948s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEiL_5h14pY&t=452s | |
| ▲ | bambax 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > and they believe god has ordered them to destroy you Maybe, but obviously the other side thinks exactly the same. Religious wars were lots of fun five centuries ago. They will be funnier still in the nuclear age. | | |
| ▲ | Alex_L_Wood 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah, yes, Israel famously publicly declaring that its' holy mission is to destroy Iran. Happened so many times, yes. |
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| ▲ | powerapple 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What's the reason of incompatibility of Islam and Jewish religion? | | |
| ▲ | elcritch 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nothing in most of their beliefs. They’re both monotheistic and similar in many regards as Islam largely inherited its tenants from both Judaism and Christianity. Jews were often well treated and flourished in the earlier Islamic caliphates. But with the formation of a Jewish Israel the conflict. Generally in Islamic belief there must be an Islamic caliphate with Sharia Law. Jerusalem is considered one of the holy sites of Islam and therefore belongs to that caliphate. That’s contrasted with Judaism and Israel being the land promised to the Jews. Though modern Israel was largely founded by secular Jews so it’s a bit more complicated on that front. |
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| ▲ | jhanschoo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The first thing I would want to do after wearing Israeli shoes would be to find a way to flee immediately and disassociate myself from being complicit with the ongoing genocide (or to resist it if I were in such a position), Iran's hostility be damned. In which case, I suppose that any resistance I might do would have the state call me an anti-Semite. | |
| ▲ | tharmas 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel has nukes, so why would they be afraid of Iran? | | |
| ▲ | raffraffraff 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's "having nukes" and there's "using nukes". https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkUVIj3KWY The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. The price the put on human life (their own people as much as anyone else) is low, and they're all for martyrdom. With Iran, you cannot assume it's a just a deterrent in a cold war. You have to assume an increased likelihood that they will actually use them. | | |
| ▲ | lostlogin 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. Compare the number of deaths caused by Iranian weapons and those caused by Israeli weapons in the last year. Or 5 years, or 10. Do you have some other way of defining ‘death cult’? | | |
| ▲ | raffraffraff 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | A death cult doesn't care about deaths in it's own population as long as it wipes out it's enemy. A death cult prizes martyrdom. |
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| ▲ | djfivyvusn 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not only that, they were planning to give them to Hezbollah. The brain-dead takes I'm hearing about this shitty war amazes me. |
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| ▲ | snapetom 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Because Islam has martydom hard coded into their existence. Mutually assured destruction doesn’t work here. | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think you realise how ignorant and racist is this idea that an entire religion and country of 90 million doesn't behave like normal human beings. | | |
| ▲ | raffraffraff 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Have you lived in Iran? It's not a whole country of 90 million people who will shout "Push the button!". Most of them are unwillingly imprisoned under a regime lead by the religious zealots who will push that button, even if it means destruction of themselves and their population. Or at least, that's the assumption that the west must make, based their religious views and their past rhetoric. | | |
| ▲ | throw310822 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which is their past rhetoric? As for their religious views, hasn't their supreme leader declared multiple times that nuclear weapons are prohibited by their religion? | | |
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| ▲ | sfe22 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It doesn’t take 90 million iranians to push a button. | |
| ▲ | ta12653421 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There was a very interesting "street walk video" by a somewhat-famous travelling-blogger, he visited Afghanistan, talked to a lot of people, created a lot of footage of their daily life, asking about the regime etc. This video got blocked after publishing by a political action group / NGO, it came back online only after dozens of other YouTube channels reported that. And yes - this video depicted life of people in a theocracy ;-) | | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You can cherry pick and show anything you want. I can go to USA, interview a few crazies (and there's a lot of them) and then make a documentary. | | |
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| ▲ | kennywinker 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Isn't christianity the one that has martyrdom at its core? Jesus was martyred for our sins after all. Christians can’t really be trusted not to sacrifice themselves at the drop of a roman helmet. Or not. Perhaps, we understand the nuances of that because we were raised in a christian culture, but don’t understand the nuances of martyrdom in islam because we weren’t raised in a muslim culture? I know that’s true for me, i assume that’s true for any non-muslim who claims stuff about the core of islam. | |
| ▲ | asadm 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are wrong. Muslims don't wake up trying to get martydom asap. Protecting life (own included) is top-most goal, so much that even harming your body (tattoos etc) is strictly prohibited. | |
| ▲ | kergonath 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It’s bizarre to read that in a world where news have been dominated by American conservatives trying to bring us to the end times for years now. Bizarre, disturbing, and terrifying. | |
| ▲ | Alex-C137 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is an extremely insane take and should be deleted immediately. Disgusting | | |
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| ▲ | deepsun 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The main point of having nukes is not using them. The moment one uses them -- they lost. Nukes are good as a deterrent, not good as a weapon. | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Same reason the U.S. and USSR were afraid of each other in the Cold War. | |
| ▲ | shusaku 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | People are just fear mongering to suggest Iran would use them or give them to those who would. The real issue here is that once you have them, you basically entrench yourself as a regional power. If the regime started falling out of favor, all their neighbors would be obliged to come to their aid to protect the nukes. Also, you would be far more limited in how you fight your proxy war. These are the things the involved parties are considering, not Armageddon fantasies. |
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| ▲ | Krasnol 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You make it sound like it's some natural law that they have to destroy the state of Israel. I mean, did you even think about this when you heard it for the first time? Do you think your common Iranian citizen wake up in the morning and feels the natural urge to destroy Israel? What is this? Be serious. This is no justification to ignore international law. But that's dead now. Nobody will ever care again until we're done with the next big war or something. Bomb away... | | |
| ▲ | simonh 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think the average Iranian citizen cares at all about Israel, one way or the other, but they don't have any say in Iranian state politics. There's no natural law setting the mullahs against the existence of Israel, as I said they think and vocally declaim publicly that it is divine law. Don't believe me, just look up what they say. I do think the way this is being handled is a travesty though. There was a functioning agreement with international monitoring in place in 2016 and Trump tore it up. Since then Iran has increased their enrichment capacity, and their stockpile of enriched material by 22 time above what they committed to in that agreement. Canceling that deal was a foolish blunder that had lead us to this. Ultimately the only path to long term peace has to be the fall of theocratic rule in Iran, but that's a mater for the Iranian people. It's quite possible the nuclear question could have been managed, but just as with NAFTA Trump saw personal political advantage is scrapping an old deal in order to rebrand it as his better deal, but dropped the ball because he doesn't understand the geopolitics, and here we are. |
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| ▲ | asadm 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | ... so you preemptively attack every neighbor and commit genocide? | | |
| ▲ | lostmsu 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Was this bombing a genocide? | | |
| ▲ | kennywinker 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The word “and” can be used to delineate two linked ideas. Sometimes they’re closely linked ideas like bombing someone AND accusing them of being two weeks away from nukes for decades. Sometimes they’re less closely linked ideas, like bombing someone AND committing genocide against someone else. |
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| ▲ | recroad 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why are you assuming that Iran wants to destroy Israel? Everything I’ve actually seen is the complete opposite: it’s Israel that clearly wants to destroy Israel. The whole “preemptive strike” stuff is BS and not a serious argument. | | |
| ▲ | intermerda 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Why are you assuming that Iran wants to destroy Israel? I'm guessing from the words and actions of Iranian leaders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani... | | |
| ▲ | recroad 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | What are you pointing at there? Their position from 1979 which is 12 years after 1967? Also, let’s leave rhetoric aside. What is the actual record of violence between Israel and anyone else? It’s not even close https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties Israel here is the aggressor. Not acknowledging that makes no sense and doesn’t leave grounds for any meaningful discussion. | | |
| ▲ | untrust 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | From the wiki they linked: In 2015, former Basij chief and senior RIGC officer, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, stated in an interview that the destruction of Israel is "nonnegotiable". In addition, according to the Times of Israel, Naqdi said that during the summer Gaza conflict with Israel, a significant portion of Hamas’s weaponry, training, and technical expertise was provided by Iran.[27][28] In 2019, Naqdi made a direct call for the destruction of Israel during a televised interview. Naqdi asserted that the Zionist regime must be "annihilated and destroyed," asserting "This will definitely happen." He declared his intention to one day raise the flag of the Islamic Revolution over Jerusalem. | |
| ▲ | nkmnz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Rhetoric aside. What was the actual record of violence when Hitler published „My Struggle“ in 1925, laying out his ideas of solving the „Jewish question“? Why should one believe the evil of it lays out its plans way in advance? |
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| ▲ | motorest 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Why are you assuming that Iran wants to destroy Israel? Everything I’ve actually seen is the complete opposite: it’s Israel that clearly wants to destroy Israel. Even by your own logic, do you believe that having a country threaten your existence is not reason enough to want them destroyed? | | |
| ▲ | recroad 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | destroy Iran I mean | | |
| ▲ | motorest 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you pay attention to my question, you'll notice that it isn't conditional to who made threats to who. Do you believe this influences your answer? |
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| ▲ | AlecSchueler 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel. Do they? What is this based on? My understanding was that they were reacting to a pattern of imperialism of which Israel was the crown jewel. Is there actually something inherent about the Shi'ite religion which says Israel must fall? | | |
| ▲ | loandbehold 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Iran was one of the first countries in the Middle East to recognize Israel. But it all changed since Islamic Revolution. Their official position since than have been that Israel cannot exist. They don't even refer to it as Israel but as "Zionist Regime". It's their official public position and what they say on their (government controlled) TV. They've been fighting proxy war with Israel since 80s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani... | | |
| ▲ | AlecSchueler 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure that answers my question. They could have a political belief that Israel must fall but you haven't shown a reason to believe it's based on their religious beliefs. Obviously the two things are tied up together but I don't believe that if a Jewish homeland state had been created in Western Europe or in Antarctica that Iran would have an issue with it. Their problem is surely that Israel represents an historical and continuing power play by Western forces, a springboard from which the US and it's allies can encourage coups, wage wars and dominate the trade of the natural resources in the region. It seems like a very practical concern more than a religious one. | | |
| ▲ | Ray20 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >but you haven't shown a reason to believe it's based on their religious beliefs. Their religious leaders like literally come out and say, "This is based on our religious beliefs." | | |
| ▲ | AlecSchueler 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Does every Shi'ite hold these same beliefs then? What is the religious basis for the belief? Henry VIII used religious justification for breaking off from the pope as well but surely we're grown up enough to recognise those movements came about from a desire for political autonomy more than disagreements over bible interpretations? | | |
| ▲ | simonh 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You're looking for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani... >In 2024, Ali Khamenei told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh: "The divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea." In particular check out the "clerics" section of that article for the statements of multiple leading religious authorities in the regime on the religious justifications. |
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| ▲ | loandbehold 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It doesn't matter for Israel weather it's based on religious belief or not. But Iran does frame their opposition in Islamic context in its communication to Iranian people. E.g. Khamenei says things like "fighting Israel to liberate Palestine is an obligation and an Islamic jihad."
https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-supreme-leader-israel-cancerous... | | |
| ▲ | AlecSchueler 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | It might not matter for Israel but it matters for me as an Irishman watching the rest of the world getting sucked into a conflict. Framing it as a religious opposition paints Iran as an irrational actor which can't be reasoned with, when it appears to me that it's behaving the way it's been pushed to behave by encroaching colonial forces. I don't believe in Islam or in Judaism but I do believe in radical discourse and trying to understand the position of the other. Saying "it's their religion to be bloody violent and destructive, what can we do?" throws any space for understanding out of the window. |
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| ▲ | nec4b an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Are you proposing moving Israel to another location? |
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| ▲ | ngcazz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They were not inching towards nukes though, were they? And why is the threat calculus here their fault when the Israelis attacked Iran unprovoked? This top-voted comment is consent-manufacturing tripe. | | |
| ▲ | mcv an hour ago | parent [-] | | Israel's attack wasn't entirely unprovoked; Iran frequently calls for attacks on Israel, wiping them from the face of the earth, and funding organizations that attack Israel. The fear that they might use nuclear weapons offensively against Israel is very real. Note that I'm not a fan of Israel, condemn their genocide in Gaza, and consider Netanyahu a war criminal. I'm also not a fan of this attack on Iran and prefer a peaceful and democratic overthrow of that regime. But calling the attack unprovoked is not entirely correct; Iran spends a lot of time provoking Israel. | | |
| ▲ | ngcazz 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | If you are familiar with how Israel came to be founded, and how Iran became an Islamic republic, you'll see how that is a naive narrative. For one, Balfour's illegal concession of Palestine to the Israelis had the clear strategic purpose of keeping pan-Arabism at bay. The ensuing establishment of Israel - by the UNSCOP, in contravention of international law - had the side effect of turbocharging settler colonialist violence (1948 and ongoing) and expansionism (e.g. 1967 annexations). That was the background to the 1953 CIA coup, and the eventual Islamic revolution in 1979. Sure, it's not the liberal democratic outcome we would've liked, but it reclaimed sovereignty lost, and the Islamic regime is aware of the historic role of Israel and their strategic and moral position in relation to it. Bottom line, if we look closely at who really is threatening whom, the reactions of the Iranians are probably quite understandable |
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| ▲ | seydor 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > by having a theocracy they Religion is just another ideology, and it s not like Islam has a specific position about nuclear energy | | |
| ▲ | ebb_earl_co 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | In my view, religion is the set of ideologies that plays the children’s game of one-upping each other’s numbers until one of the children says “infinity” and sticks fingers in ears, sayin the game is over. By this I mean the religious ideological move is eternal punishment for what they deem unsatisfactory or eternal bliss for compliance, no other branch. Other ideologies invoke similar (infinite growth in capitalism, e.g.) but those are hyperbole for proselytization. An ideology that attempts to persuade with either the most egregious stick possible or the most delicious carrot possible makes religion the least palatable of ideologies. |
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| ▲ | littlestymaar 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all. You're misunderstanding their position and that's why it seems idiotic to you: they stopped working on building nukes back in 2003, after that date all they did was using the ability to get nukes as a negotiation leverage, that's how they got JPCoA in 2015 and since the US unilaterally left it in 2018 and the rest of the Western world failed to keep it working (that would have required courage to anger the US), Iran was seeking to force a new deal by raising the bar a bit: they announced back in 2022 that they'd enrich up to 60% in order to increase their negotiation leverage, but they didn't go past that stage nor did they work on the militarization tech in the meantime, because they weren't aiming to get the bomb at all. | |
| ▲ | dandanua 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "In God we trust" | | | |
| ▲ | 1oooqooq 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | or, you know, they just want power generators, like they claimed for decades now and all the UN auditors confirmed every time? | |
| ▲ | belter 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives. Today strike on Iran nuclear sites endangers millions of American and Israeli lives. It teaches Tehran the same lesson North Korea learned long ago. That only a nuclear deterrent secures a regime survival. To believe Iran will absorb this blow without striking back is not merely naive, it is dangerously delusional. It is also clear any Iranian nuclear critical assets were moved to alternative secret sites long before the strikes, as satellite photos show: "Satellite images show activity at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility before U.S. air strikes" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/22/satellite-images-show-activi... |
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| ▲ | Simon_O_Rourke 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That's an all around bad move for the US. Getting dragged into an Israeli war and probably having to carry the can for the next few years alone after getting into a mess not of our own making (well directly anyway). This is going to hit gas prices, the markets and US security considerations all in order to help keep the current Israeli leadership out of Israeli prisons. Bad move. |
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| ▲ | zild3d 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > the US. Getting dragged into an Israeli war A lot of people saying this, what would this actually entail? My money is much more on this being a "1 and done" exchange. Iran poses very little threat now, launchers being taken out everyday, leadership chain wiped out, seemingly no other Iran allies getting pulled into the fold | | |
| ▲ | mjburgess 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Iran has a population of 92mil and an economy vastly stronger than iraq 2003 -- it also has extremely motivated backers in China, who are eagar to use it the way the US uses Ukraine: a means to deplete a peer competitor of their military resources. The best outcome for China here is the US blowing its assets in Iran. The propaganda at the moment is israel is winning, iran isnt using missiles because of "air superiority", and the US is able and willing to detroy the nuclear capacity via the air. All of these claims are false. Iran's capacity to strike back remains vast using only its own resources. What the US has been dragged into by israel is an amazing opportunity for a US peer competitor (china) to grind down its arms -- it would be remarkable if China doesn't take it. It can hardly afford the US to be a well-armed protector of Taiwan. The iranian regieme's apparent hesitation at the moment is not as extreme as russia's on the first days of the ukraine war, and look at where we are now. This apparent hesitation is waiting for israel to deplete its missile defense, waiting for a more stable intelligence environment (presumably moving assets, etc. around out of uncovered israeli operations), and most of all, waiting for a moment to strike off-guard. | |
| ▲ | Panoramix 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Reports are that if Iran keeps things going on, Israel is going to run out of interceptors in 10 days or so, at which point they are gonna be seriously damaged. Some missiles are already getting through, there's speculation of hyper-sonic missiles from Iran or just failure to shoot them down. Either way: This doesn't stop here, and it was never about these bogus nuclear weapons (which are just around the corner since the 80's) just like Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction. They want to place a puppet government...what could go wrong? | | |
| ▲ | MF-DOOM an hour ago | parent [-] | | This isn’t accurate. The thing that’s going to possibly be depleted is “Arrow 3” - the first line of aerial defense (excluding operations that target the launchers within Iran). They still have plenty of Arrow 2 and David’s’ slingshot missiles. |
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| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This only happens if Iran sits there and takes it. What if they close the strait? Or shoot missiles to US bases? | | |
| ▲ | infecto 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I have mixed feelings about the current state but is that a legitimate question. I imagine Iran would fire once on the US and then all heck would reign down on them from the skies. I don’t see a situation where Iran can hold on. Most of the people do not support the government. |
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| ▲ | tim333 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Dunno - better than the alternative of Iran getting nukes. | | |
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| ▲ | lerp-io 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| moral of the story: if you don’t make the nuke to wipe everyone out fast enough, you will eventually get bombed and no amount of diplomacy will save you from game theory. |
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| ▲ | _heimdall 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I do agree with the sentiment here, but "no amount of diplomacy" isn't really a description of Iran's government. The Iranian government has frequently reference a goal of destroying Israel, a sovereign nation, and referred to the US in very disparaging (and biblical) terms. That doesn't justify direct attack, but it also isn't diplomatic. | | |
| ▲ | azinman2 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Disparaging? They literally chant death to America. Is that not also calling for its destruction? | | |
| ▲ | lunarboy 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm sure the decades of CIA meddling in the Middle East and endless wars had no effect on raising generations of US hatred. To hit someone, then call them dangerous when they say "I hate you" is real hero stuff | | |
| ▲ | maximus-decimus an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Okay so assuming the U.S. is 100% responsible for Iran wishing death on them, what do you think the U.S. should do? Let Iran make a nuclear weapon and nuke the U.S.? Or are you arguing Iran is harmless despite openly wishing death on the U.S.? | | |
| ▲ | mjburgess 10 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/10/iran-saudi-ara... What the US was doing before Israel blew up its efforts. The idea that iran has any interest in using nuclear weapons is so absurd that it's incredible any one could take this propaganda seriously. Every relevant country has at least second strike capabilities against Iran, so it would be suicidal in the extreme -- it's also highly likely that the handful of nukes they'd have would be mostly intercepted. They haven't even developed second strike themselves, so they'd almost certainly lose any nuclear capacity on first attempted use. Iran's capacity for nuclear agression with nukes, is tiny. Iran having a nuclear weapon would be one of the most stabilising outcomes in the middle east, as it would prevent israel (which is the most violent, destablising state in the region) from acting with impunity. This is why israel has, for 30 years, been complaining that iran is "months away" from a bomb, and why for 20 years its being trying to precipitate a war to drag the US into. Iran having a nuclear weapon is the best possible outcome for global security, precisely because its the only configuration of events which prevents israel from waging wars of aggression on its neighbors (syria, iran, et al.). |
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| ▲ | inglor_cz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Neither of you are wrong. There are genuine reasons for hatred of the West in the Middle East, AND the Islamists are doing their best to whip up that hatred even more and weaponize it. That said, "organic" hatred towards the US is much more common in the Arab world than in Iran. Smarter people who live under totalitarian regimes tend to become distrustful of the message that the regime goons are relentlessly pushing, and if that message is "Death to America", the underground reaction will be "America must be cool if the idiots up there hate it so much". I saw the same with my own eyes in late-stage Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Regime propaganda is one thing, its effect on the people another. It usually works much less than expected. |
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| ▲ | mft_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Who is “they”? A representative subset of the overall population, or a group of extremists, possibly performing for the cameras?
Iran was once an open and liberal country; the current government is generally very unpopular. Just as Netanyahu‘s actions do not represent all Israelis, so the Iranian government does not represent all Iranians. | |
| ▲ | netsharc an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Result 3 of 9 for "Death to America". Do you like it when people quote you out of context?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393 | |
| ▲ | buyucu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Can you blame them. CIA overthrew the only democratic government they ever had, and replaced it with a dictator. |
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| ▲ | buyucu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The rhetoric coming from Iran is very mild compared to the ulta-religious venom coming from Tel Aviv. | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran has actually been quite willing to negotiate. It has not withdrawn from the talks, it was the US that did it the last time under Trump. Are you aware that Iran approved of US invasion of Iraq in the Gulf War? It even allowed the use of it's air space. Are you aware that Iran was the only country excluded from the Madrid peace talks of 1991 between Israel and Palestine? To counter this exclusion, Iran strengthened it's ties with Hamas and Hizbollah. Iran is not some insane theocracy seeking of everyone's destruction. The regime is bad for the people, but self-interested just as any other, and benefits very little from full exclusion. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I didn't say Iran has been unwilling to negotiate or that they haven't been diplomatic at all. The prior comment I was replying to implied that the Iranians couldn't have been more diplomatic than they already have been. That's simply untrue and ignores much of the rhetoric coming out from the Iranian government related to Israel and the US. More importantly, it ignores Iran's involvement with a handful of non-state militant groups in the region. |
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| ▲ | LAC-Tech 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I do agree with the sentiment here, but "no amount of diplomacy" isn't really a description of Iran's government. That's completely unfair to Iran. They had IAEA inspectors in their country and they were negotiating with the US (a nation who has put crippling sanctions on them). Then a country that doesn't have IAEA inspectors bombed them, killing the people that very people who were negotiating with the US. Their message since than has been reasonable; "we won't negotiate while Israel is attacking us". How much more diplomatic would you like them to be? They can't just roll over and take it, or they'll be finished. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My point wasn't that they haven't practiced some level of diplomacy. I was commenting on the level with with the earlier comment spoke of their diplomacy, and the seeming implication that they couldn't have been more diplomatic. Calling for death to America, speaking of desires for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, funding non-state militant actors in the region, etc are all acts that inflame and go counter to the diplomacy they were otherwise taking part in. | | | |
| ▲ | crubier 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > How much more diplomatic would you like them to be? I don't know maybe just start by not swearing that your neighbor must be destroyed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani... | | |
| ▲ | LAC-Tech 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How's your Persian? "Marg Bar <noun" appears to a ritualistic phrase, meaning 'down with': https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/69301/what-do-t... Here they are saying "Death to Khamenei" over power outages: https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/iran/2021-07-06/ty-... Here's a story of a taxi driver saying "Death to traffic": https://blog.ricksteves.com/blog/death-to-israel-death-to-tr... It's also worth pointing out that wanting Israel (the state) destroyed is not the same thing as wanting everyone who lives there to die. I'm glad the Third Reich was destroyed, I'm also glad the German people survived it. | |
| ▲ | KaiserPro 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | india/pakistan whitter on about it all the time. As did the french/english. But, if you were near to a country that was busily invading neighbours, run by religious zealots, a huge military had a history of using allies to attack you and is obviously illegally playing with nuclear bombs what would you do? The problem is, that describes both iran and israel. | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Let's retire this argument already. None of this rhetoric means anything until it's put to action, which Iran has never done. This is something the leaders say to gain popular support by acting like they have an enemy to fight. Similar to Trump claiming Mexico will pay for the wall. | | |
| ▲ | os2warpman 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >None of this rhetoric means anything until it's put to action, which Iran has never done. Hezbollah. | | |
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| ▲ | BrandoElFollito 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I was surprised to read that in Europe, the closest country to have nuclear weapons are the Netherlands (if they wanted to) https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/90870/11473 | | | |
| ▲ | rocqua 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is a massive oversimplification of the diplomatic failures on many sides here. You could just as easily say that doing regime change in a country will make them hate you, or that backing out of deals will make things worse, or that Israel can shape US policy at their own whims. Yes, Iran had a stupid nuclear strategy. But that is only a minor part of this story. | |
| ▲ | dartharva 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wasn't so with India. Their first experimental test detonation was in 1974 (Smiling Buddha) in which they used nuclear material that US and Canada themselves supplied under "Atoms for Peace", but it wasn't until 24 years later in 1998 (Operation Shakti) that the country managed to test enough to call itself a nuclear state. They did all this while they were in consistent active conflict with large and powerful neighbors on three sides, along with explicit hostility from the US. |
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| ▲ | einrealist an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Those UN buildings in Geneva and New York, are they up for sale already? What about the buildings of the US Congress? |
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| ▲ | Ciantic 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The only way out of this in the long term is via negotiations. The US and Israel were lucky that Iran built their Fordow plant only 50 meters underground. What will the US do when Iran rebuilds it far deeper? They have a coal mine going 1200 meters deep. Iran is technologically far more capable than North Korea, which ultimately succeeded in building the bomb. The US knows this and wouldn't have started this war if Israel hadn't done it first. The first Iran deal in 2015 was not perfect, but it would have provided some guarantees for 15 years. If Iran is determined, how many years has this bombing bought? If I had to guess, Israel is back calling doom ~3 years when the US is having new elections. Israel doesn't want the removal of the Iran sanctions, why would they? This means whatever deal the US makes with Iran, it's not going to be good enough for Israel. |
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| ▲ | Stevvo 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There is another way out that may be more likely than negotiations; Iran will now obtain a nuclear weapon.
Iran has had the capability to build one for as long as Netanyahu has been singing about it(20+ years). Now they have the motivation also. | |
| ▲ | tim333 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Or regime change. Not saying it's a good idea but I'd give it at least 50/50 of happening. |
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| ▲ | ggm 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wonder if the bunker buster was used. It has a somewhat indirect lineage to the ww2 grand slam designed by Barnes Wallis. Iran has massive earthquake risks. For reasons unassociated with nuclear bunkers they do a lot of research into (fibre, and other) strengthened cement construction. With obvious applications to their nuclear industry of course. Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour. |
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| ▲ | hwillis 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour. Iran does not have the same degree of sexist restrictions as eg Saudi Arabia. It's a very different climate from places where salafism is more common. Female education in particular is highly supported eg: https://x.com/khamenei_ir/status/1869369086142296490 | |
| ▲ | missedthecue 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | By a wide margin, the majority of Iranian university students are women. The ratio is over 60/40 | | |
| ▲ | Narretz 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I guess because many men are needed for the IRGC and related organisations. | | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I doubt that the intersection of IRGC volunteers and potential university students is too big. The gender ratio is similar in other Middle Eastern countries. Once women in the Islamic world get the legal right to educate themselves, they tend to make use of it much more than men do. It is a pathway towards personal independence. |
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| ▲ | tbrownaw 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Another unrelated point, a significant number of Iranian civil engineering graduates are women. A somewhat dichotomous economy, when you consider the theocratic restrictions on costume and behaviour. I thought it was generally known that richer societies with me equal treatment - where people are generally more able to choose jobs they like rather than needing to take whatever's a ticket to a decent life - are the places with higher disparities in well-paying occupations? | |
| ▲ | coliveira 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bunker buster is not necessarily a solution for this. It was created for normal bunkers, WW2 style of construction. What they have in Iran are construction sites very deep in the mountains. I wouldn't be surprised if this type of bombs can't do more than superficial damage to the sites. | | |
| ▲ | pigbearpig 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Right...the GBU-57 having been placed into service in 2011 was surely created to destroy 65-year old bunker designs. | |
| ▲ | trhway 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | GBU-57 reaches 200ft depth, Fordow is 300ft. The seismic wave of explosion at 200ft of several tons of TNT would reach 300ft with pretty damaging energy. And, if it weren't enough, you can always put a second bomb into the hole made by the first one. To the commenters below: - nobody would let Iran to come even close to remilitarizing again. No centrifuges, and no placing them or anything similar under ground, etc. - I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. The no-fly is necessary, and Israel just doesn't have enough resources. The further scenario that i see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44343063 - jugding by, for example, the precise drone strikes on the top military commanders, Israel has had very good intelligence from Iran, so i'm pretty sure that general parameters like the depth were well known to them (the public statement of 300ft may be a lie, yet the point is that US and Israel know the depth and thus weapons to use) | | |
| ▲ | roenxi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > - nobody would let Iran to come even close to remilitarizing again. No centrifuges, and no placing them or anything similar under ground, etc. How would they enforce that? It is underground, they can't exactly monitor what is down there with satellite photos. There'd need to be something like a blanket ban on underground mining across the whole of Iran and probably a country-wide occupation to enforce the ban. Otherwise it seems quite difficult to identify where the hypothetical centrifuges are. | |
| ▲ | missedthecue 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | GBU-57 reaches 200ft of soil and gravel. Not 200ft of 5000psi limestone typical of the Qom formation in that area of Iran. | | |
| ▲ | trhway 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | That limestone probably much better transfers the seismic wave of the explosion though. | | |
| ▲ | missedthecue 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The equipment in the facility isn't bolted into the limestone though. The facility is inside ultra high performance concrete and if the Iranian engineers had two braincells, dampening layers. They were building it for this moment after all. |
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| ▲ | crazylogger 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I imagine Iran will just pick a 1000-meter mountain to dig under then? | |
| ▲ | SllX 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Supposedly we dropped six, but I'm interested in any information that comes out about the final damage to see if this was sufficient. Ideally this would be the beginning and end of our direct engagements in this conflict. EDIT: I kind of wish you had broken your "commenters below" piece into separate replies, but I assume this one was directed at me: > - I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. The no-fly is necessary, and Israel just doesn't have enough resources. The further scenario that i see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44343063 I didn't even consider a no-fly zone, and perhaps. I mean at this point, the current Iranian regime is in the most precarious situation it has ever been in whether they go for the kill against Ali Khamenei or just keep picking out the people below him and the IRGC's ability to fight. But if we do this, then we, and I guess I mean we now that we've actually bombed them, then we're committing to more than just taking out their nuclear capabilities, but we're committing to seeing a full regime change come to fruition. To be blunt, given our most recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm still very much of the opinion that the least amount of American involvement, the better. If our bombs help curtail Iran's nuclear weapon R&D and we didn't lose a single B-2 in the process, then great, we've done some good for the world[1], but our track record on seeing regime changes through to the end has been less than fabulous. [1] Still waiting to see how successful the mission was towards this goal by the way. | | |
| ▲ | owebmaster 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > then great, we've done some good for the world Please don't bring this kind of BS to the discussion | |
| ▲ | shepherdjerred 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I wonder if we have that mission accomplished banner in storage somewhere |
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| ▲ | KaiserPro 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > nobody would let Iran to come even close to remilitarizing again. No centrifuges, and no placing them or anything similar under ground, etc. Well given that we've been trying to stop that for many years, I doubt its within the US's gift to change that. Also what has iran got to loose now? like its already being bombed to shit. It's lost a generation to the iran/iraq war, why not another one where they take the USA, israel and saudis with them? > I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. that sounds like a forever war. Moreover trump doesn't have the attention span to deploy a nofly zone for any length of time. also, have you see the size of iran? > Israel has had very good intelligence from Iran, so i'm pretty sure that general parameters like the depth were well known to them yup, but the performance of munitions is unknown. Moreover they are not actually going to tell anyone the real results of the strike. Can you imagine generals telling Hegseth that his plan idea has failed because the clearly articulated unknowns came to pass. let alone trump? | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > you can always put a second bomb into the hole made by the first one This is tremendously difficult. There is nothing unclassified to suggest we can do this. (There is also no evidence it didn’t occur. Just clarifying the borders of the fog of war here.) | | |
| ▲ | trhway 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The JDAM precision is 5m. More than 30 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing "At 04:30 on the morning of 13 February, two F-117 stealth bombers each dropped a 910 kilograms (2,000 lb) GBU-27 laser-guided bomb on the shelter. The first bomb cut through 3 metres (10 ft) of reinforced concrete before a time-delayed fuse exploded. Minutes later, the second bomb followed the path cut by the first bomb." | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Huh. Thank you. I'm still cautiously sceptical this scaled to the 57, but less so than before. |
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| ▲ | coliveira 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Fordow is 300ft You seem to believe they really have accurate information about these installations. I doubt it. | | |
| ▲ | creato 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They had pinpoint accurate information about a lot of senior leaders, that seems a lot harder to know than a stationary facility's location and layout. | | |
| ▲ | roenxi an hour ago | parent [-] | | Tracking a person actually seems pretty easy to do. Hack their phone, launch ze missiles. Obviously not trivial, but it is pretty easy to imagine a chain of events involving a little social engineering and a little spycraft involving the major tech companies. The Iranians thought they were mid-negotiations and assassinating their leadership seems counterproductive even in hindsight, I doubt they were using heightened opsec. Getting the layout of an underground facility, on the other hand, is quite hard to do even on purpose. They'd really want the engineering plans I suppose - which should be quite secure even on a bad day. I wouldn't assume it was secure but it'd be harder than finding senior leadership who often go out in public or to their kids school plays in a regular year. |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | German contractors helped the Iranians lots. I would be good money that they have been debriefed and/or spied on. |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why a no-fly zone? | |
| ▲ | tguvot 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | no fly or not no fly, but iranian foreign minister had to ask permission from idf in order to fly out to geneva |
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| ▲ | arandomusername 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I wonder if the bunker buster was used Most certainly was. It's underground (Fordow is ~60m?) so it's either that or nukes. | | |
| ▲ | ggm 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As I understand it enrichment is by gas centrifuge or thermal diffusion. An earthquake bomb would disrupt both. You wouldn't be starting the feed cycle up rapidly, but since we're told Iran has stockpiles, this goes to sustainable delivery of materials more than specific short term risk. As a strategy, I see this as flawed. A dirty bomb remains viable with partially enriched materials. (This does not mean to imply I support either bombing or production of weapons grade materiel. It's a comment to outcome, not wisdom) | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > A dirty bomb remains viable with partially enriched materials. A dirty bomb is basically Hollywood nonsense, and wouldn't use uranium to begin with because it isn't very radioactive. The premise is that you put radioactive materials into a conventional explosive to spread it around. But spreading a kilogram of something over a small area is boring because you can fully vaporize a small area using conventional explosives, spreading a kilogram of something over a large area is useless because you'd be diluting it so much it wouldn't matter, and spreading several tons of something over a large area is back to "you could do more damage by just using several tons of far cheaper conventional explosives". | | |
| ▲ | dralley 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Also anything that is dangerous enough to actually be scary in dirty bomb form, like Cobalt-60, would be impossible to handle without providing a lethal dose of radiation to anyone working with he material within minutes if not seconds (presumably a reasonablely large & dangerous amount of this material is involved). At least, not without incredibly expensive equipment. And by the time you factor in those prerequisites it's just not worth it. | |
| ▲ | bandrami 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The toxicity of the Uranium would be a bigger problem than the radioactivity | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | And has the same issue with dilution, and is even more boring because there are much cheaper things with more chemical toxicity than uranium too, like lead. | |
| ▲ | adastra22 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It isn’t any more toxic than lead, which this bomb probably was filled with. |
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| ▲ | gh02t 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Uranium, especially highly enriched uranium, is not very radioactive. That's one of the reasons its useful for weapons. UF6 is chemically really nasty, but it's heavy and also you have criticality issues that limit how much you can pack into a confined space before it explosively disassembles. That is to say, it would make an extremely poor dirty bomb that would do very little. It'd scare people of course but there are far easier things they could use to achieve that. Far more concerning is the possibility that they give it away to someone else. Enrichment is nonlinear, going from 60% to the 90% needed for weapons is a fairly trivial amount of work. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway2037 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Enrichment is nonlinear
Can anyone explain the science behind this statement? To be clear: I believe it, and I have seen multiple reputable sources say that Iran can enrich to 90% within a few months. I was surprised that it is so quick. | | |
| ▲ | perihelions 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You know how Shannon entropy works in CS, compression and stuff? Atoms work the same way: their mixing entropy is that same x*ln(x) sum which is an extremely steep function near its boundaries. That's your non-linearity. That statistical entropy corresponds to macroscopic thermodynamic properties, enthalpy and work. The starting uranium atom ratios, 0.7%/99.3%, are a very unbalanced mixture deep into that non-linearity side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing (The other half of it is that, as you progressively enrich, you start to discard the "depleted" part of the mass flow, and work only with the, gradually smaller, "enriched" mass flow). | |
| ▲ | cryptonector 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You start with natural uranium, which has .72% U-235. Getting from that to 20% is _hard_. You need large cascades of centrifuges to do this because it's only .72%, so each stage gets you just a wee bit more enriched. You do this over and over and over again until you get to higher enrichment. Once you have HEU enriching further is very easy for the same reason that it was hard when it was unenriched: now the stuff you don't want (U-238) is much less. To get from 80% HEU to 96% is trivial using the same centrifuge cascades, and how long it takes really depends on a) how much 80% HEU you have, and b) how much 96% HEU you want. If you have 100lbs of 80% HEU then to get to 10lbs of 96% HEU might really only take weeks if not less when it might have taken years to get from .72% to 80%. |
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| ▲ | anonymars 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It'd scare people of course but there are far easier things they could use to achieve that. I wouldn't discount it, though. Remember, feelings matter more than facts. Magnitudes more people die on the road than in the air, but we know how well that translates to fear and action. I mean heck, how about 9/11 compared to COVID? Wearing a mask for a while: heinous assault on freedom, Apple pie, and the American way. Meanwhile, the post-9/11 security and surveillance apparatus: totally justified to keep America safe | | |
| ▲ | gh02t 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, my point is there are much better options that would also induce fear and actually be effective. Fentanyl strapped to an explosive, or any of a ton of other chemical agents. Iran would do far more damage -- and create a deep source of fear that would likely have lingering consequences for decades -- by giving their HEU away rather than making an ineffective dirty bomb. There is no way anybody who knows what they had would use it that way. Even the most fanatical member of the Iranian regime understands what to do with the material better than that. | |
| ▲ | XorNot 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | While true, the problem is it wouldn't meaningfully change the security situation for Iran. Deliverable nuclear weapons make you invasion proof - nobody wants to risk it. A "dirty bomb" isn't something that can come flying in on an ICBM and eliminate large chunks of your nation - the threat of it is more likely to enhance aggression rather then deter it. |
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| ▲ | neves 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Remember that Israel had more nuclear bombs than China and never signed any international as tmy treaty. | | |
| ▲ | hollerith 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | China is estimated to have approximately 600 nuclear warheads. China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal and is projected to reach at least 1,000 operational warheads by 2030. Israel is widely believed to possess around 90 nuclear warheads. | |
| ▲ | invalidname 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel never acknowledged that. It is claimed that the US president at the time demanded that Israel kept this a secret to avoid embarrassment to the US. Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that. | | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Iran repeatedly calls for death to Israel and the USA. Israel never did that. Calling for it and being actually able to do it are two very different things. It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to. | | |
| ▲ | invalidname 3 minutes ago | parent [-] | | So based on your logic we should just let them gain that ability and see what happens? > It is similar to swearing at someone "Fuck you". It doesn't mean you're actually able and willing to. Since they conducted decades of terrorism against Israel the USA and our allies a more apt example would be a person who repeatedly stabbed our friends is trying to get a bomb that could kill us all. It's amazing to me how people are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to people who literally led terrorist attacks against their country. To people who would stone gay people and punish women for the crime of rape. But won't give a similar benefit of doubt to the people opposing them. Who won't consider that, maybe, just maybe, the stuff you read on the internet isn't the whole truth. |
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| ▲ | Narretz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it. | | |
| ▲ | invalidname 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Israel doesn't talk about destroying Gaza, it just does it. That's clever. Virtue signaling 101. And when things turn worse you can pat yourself on the back claiming that your virtue was intact and you were on the "right side of history". You can pretend that none of the violence is related to the side you chose. The fact is that western ignorance is deeply at fault for the violence in Gaza. Probably more so than many others. Why? There are three sides to this conflict: * Moderate people - these are moderate Israelis and Palestinians. These are by far the majority. They might not agree on all the details or even on a Palestinian state, but they don't want violence and will try to avoid it when possible. * Zero sum players - e.g. Hamas and Israelis who commit crimes e.g. deep settlements, war crimes etc. Some of them are sadly even in the Israeli government now. They've gained strength in Israel thanks to Hamas violence and vice versa. They feed each other. For every Hamas terrorist plot, the Israeli extremists build their base further and commit their own atrocities which result in Hamas gaining traction. * Chaos actors - This is where Iran is. Some chaos actors don't care who wins and in some cases they choose a side. This is also where you reside. It is not a good place to be in. Now you might have the knee jerk reaction. You think you're one of the "good guys", but you're not. You picked a side and you throw the blame on Israel while ignoring the legitimate facts Israel has in waging war against a zero-sum player (Hamas). By blaming Israel for the destruction in Gaza you essentially tell Hamas: no harm no foul. Hamas hears you loud and clear. They can sacrifice all the Palestinian lives, starve them, use children and civilians as cannon fodder. As far as many in the west are concerned, Israel is the only one to blame. That removes their incentive to surrender and encourages them to escalate the violence. The way they see it is that this encourages hostility which will keep the war going forever. They think that it will create a situation in which Israel will lose western support and will collapse as a result. The problem with this logic is that if Israel loses western support it will likely shift to the extreme right-wing and in that situation the Palestinians would be in serious trouble. Want proof? Go to a pro-Palestine rally carrying both a Palestinian flag and an Israeli flag to support co-existence which is supposed to be their goal. It isn't. Try wearing a yellow ribbon in such a rally to encourage the return of innocent civilians from Gaza. Same thing. These are not pro-Palestine rallies, they are anti-Israel rallies. Is it any surprise that Israel is becoming more extreme? |
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| ▲ | rudedogg 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > earthquake bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb for others who haven't heard the term | |
| ▲ | arandomusername 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran is prone to earthquakes, would an earthquake bomb do more damage than that? Even if it just damages the centrifuges, as far as I see it, it would just delay their enrichment process, severely less than total destruction of their underground base. | | |
| ▲ | ggm 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes that's basically my point. They recalibrate, tighten the pipes, and flush the contamination back out of the chain. 6 to 8 weeks/days/whatever later it's back in cycle. | | |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > As I understand it enrichment is by gas centrifuge or thermal diffusion. Centrifuges. They got them via the A. Q. Khan network. We learned about if circa 2005 from Qaddaffi who gave up his to secure peace and his safety (and it didn't turn out well for him because Obama did not respect the gentleman's deal Qaddaffi had with Bush). |
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| ▲ | nopelynopington 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Whatever about bombing Iran with conventional weapons, being the first president since Truman to nuke another country would split Trumps support base, and also legitimize using nuclear weapons in regional conflicts which would be extremely bad news for Ukraine | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | the bunker buster, if used, will almost certainly be nuclear. estimated tonnage: 300 kt | | |
| ▲ | p_ing 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | MOP is a conventional weapon, 30,000 lbs. Only the B-2 is rated to carry it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP | | |
| ▲ | xnx 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Genuinely surprised that Israel couldn't push one out of their c-130s | | |
| ▲ | algorithmsRcool 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The kinetics matter here. The B2 flies much higher than the C-130 which would aid the GBU-57 MOP (almost certainly used here) in it's ability to penetrate to maximum depth. 80% of the 15 ton weight of that bomb is just heavy metal to give it maximum energy as it borrows into the ground. Also, each B2 can carry 2 MOPs making it a better platform than a C-130, and that isn't even taking the stealth of the platform into account | | |
| ▲ | xnx 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Also, each B2 can carry 2 MOPs Wow. That is amazing. 60,000 lbs. combined. |
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| ▲ | 1659447091 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Don't think the C-130s can fly high enough with a single 30,000lb bomb. The graphic at bbc site show it would be dropped from about 12km (~40,000 ft) in order to gain the speed needed to drive it some 60m underground. | | |
| ▲ | ahazred8ta 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | From 40,000 feet, the bomb would take ~ 50 seconds to fall and would impact at mach 1.5. |
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| ▲ | CyanLite2 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Various sources are saying 6 to 12 of these bombs were used. So, you'd need a lot of C-130s and those planes are too slow to NOT get shot down. | |
| ▲ | giantg2 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do they even have access to this variant? I thought they had access to the older ones that weren't as advanced. | | |
| ▲ | dingaling 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The MOP isn't particularly 'advanced', it's basically refined version of the Korean-vintage Tarzon guided earthquake bombs. It's just too heavy for most military aircraft to carry. The IDF has the F-15I which has a centerline hard point rated for 5,000lb load. That's immense for a fighter but a magnitude too low for the MOP. There are a variety of smaller US penetrating bombs that the F-15 can handle, but they don't have the mass and structure to penetrate as deeply. | |
| ▲ | YZF 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They do not. |
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| ▲ | p_ing 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel doesn't have access to the MOP. | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel hasn’t degraded Iranian air defenses that much. The stuff that can’t threaten a F-35 can still trouble a C-130. | | |
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| ▲ | arandomusername 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The GBU-57 was most likely used, which is non nuclear | |
| ▲ | ranger_danger 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > almost certainly be nuclear Source: | |
| ▲ | ggm 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is nonsense. | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | those of you hating on this comment, the conventional weapons could not possibly work, the facility is too deep | | |
| ▲ | tempestn 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Even after everyone corrected you with information on the specific ordinance used, you're doubling down? | | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | they might be right, but that's why the attack failed and why there's a risk what I said might still come true i was listening to Al Jazeera, one of the DC flaks they interviewed gave an upper estimate of the facility depth as 1000 ft. The conventional device can go to something like 60m or 200 ft. 6 devices were dropped, they would have to have everything, including geology with repeated strikes on the same point, be perfect to get past 1000 feet, and then they probably would not destroy the whole facility. As far as I know, they don't even have a good map of the layout. hence, the only real option is a nuclear weapon. this is absolutely being considered inside the pentagon. our government is psychotic. a 1 kt nuclear weapon (laughably small, hiroshima was 15 kt) is 73x more powerful than a 30,000 lb bomb. they would be like, well, it's an underground explosion! The world will forgive us. it's so crafty and smart to use a nuke to stop a nuke (that doesn't exist). https://x.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1935741526191100181 "The effectiveness of GBU-57s has been a topic of deep contention at the Pentagon since the start of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were briefed that perhaps only a tactical nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Fordow because of how deeply it is located." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/19/trump-caution-... |
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| ▲ | tiffanyh 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, bunker buster was used. Per a different source: > It included a strike on the heavily-fortified Fordo nuclear site, according to Trump, which is located roughly 300 feet under a mountain about 100 miles south of Tehran. It's a move that Israel has been lobbying the U.S. to carry out, given that only the U.S. has the kind of powerful "bunker buster" bomb capable of reaching the site. Known as the GBU-57 MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator), the bomb can only be transported by one specific U.S. warplane, the B-2 stealth bomber, due to its immense 30,000 pound weight. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/21/nx-s1-5441127/iran-us-strike-... | | |
| ▲ | throwaway2037 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I read the article in full. There is no confirmation of using GBU-57 in the strike. Re-read your quoted section.
The English is a bit convoluted, but does do not confirm usage. Tin foil hat engaged: For all we know special forces detonated plastic explosives deep on site after doors were blown off. More seriously: Nothing has been confirmed except a Truth Social post. | | |
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| ▲ | tptacek 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | CNN reports 12 GBU-57s were dropped on Fordow. Can I say again how deeply silly this munition is? What's special about a GBU-57 isn't its explosive force. It's that the bomb casing is made out of special high-density ultra-heavy steel; it's deliberately just a super heavy bomb with a delayed fuse. It is literally like them dropping cartoon anvils out of the sky. From what I've read, the idea is that they keep dropping bombs into the same bomb-hole that previous sorties left, each round of bombs drilling deeper into the structure. | | |
| ▲ | ReptileMan 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >Can I say again how deeply silly this munition is? If it is silly and it works, then it is not silly. If I remember correctly you have good cryptography skills. Rectothermal/rubber hose cryptoanalysis is quite silly too, but breaks AES,RSA,ECC and post quantum crypto schemes in 30 seconds. | |
| ▲ | stogot 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So many armchair quarterbacks in this thread. You haven’t defined how silly this is beyond your feelings. Are you a munition expert? If you were an AF general given this order, what tactic would you choose excluding a nuke? The same bomb hole tactic is an untested theory (which may be ineffective but not silly) but we’ll know more later this week once MAXAR surveillance and other independent or IAEA analysis rolls in.
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| ▲ | tptacek 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm not an expert. I just think dropping giant anvils from the sky is Loony Toons tactics. Maybe it works great! I don't know! But it's worth knowing how these things work, and how they work is: they're just super super heavy. | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You are reading the wordy "silly" incorrectly. |
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| ▲ | FridayoLeary 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Thanks for trying to make this into a technical discussion. I just realised that this bomb is not the same as the so called Mother of all bombs, which by the way has so far only been used once also by trump. That's the gbu 43. Why did they find
it necessary to build an even bigger bomb? I wonder if they anticipated strikes on the me. As to your other point iran seems to have a decent level of education. Building an entire home grown nuclear program under sanctions is impressive. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The MOP is meant for a different use than the MOAB, it isn't about size. The MOAB is meant for surface destruction, the MOP is a penetrating ordinance meant to go deep through rock before eventually exploding. | |
| ▲ | ggm 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Different outcomes. Moab is fuel air explosion and causes massive pressure wave disruption, it's usable against tunnels but operates on a different principle. Bunker buster is an earth penetration weapon to make a camouflet happen and destroy structural integrity. | | | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The GBU-57 used here is an outgrowth of the demonstrated inadequacy of traditional bunker busters bombs used in the Middle East after 9/11. They needed something more specialized for deep penetration than the old bunker busters. This was kind of a stopgap weapon that works pretty well but the size limits the practicality. US is developing a new generation of purpose-built deep penetration bombs that are a fraction of the size of the GBU-57. | | |
| ▲ | hooo 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | What’s the core technology that enables them? It is crazy how deep the GBU-57 can get before detonating | | |
| ▲ | ggm 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Case hardening. Making something which if propelled fast enough (secondary issue) and with a G force resisting detonator (secondary issue) which has sufficient integrity and inertia to penetrate as deeply as possible before exploding. Materials science in making aerodynamic rigid, shock tolerant materials to fling at the ground. I am sure the materials science aspects have come along since ww2, as has delivery technology, but I'd say how it goes fast, hits accurately and explodes is secondary to making a case survive impact and penetrate. I would posit shaped charges could be amazing in this, if you could make big ones to send very high energy plasma out. I'm less sure depleted uranium would bring much to the table. (Not in weapons engineering, happy to be corrected) | | |
| ▲ | giantg2 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure you would want a shaped charge unless you guarantee it was pointing in the right directionatthe right time. Modern bunker design usually includes deflection tactics. |
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| ▲ | kragen 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | According to public information, Eglin steel. I was guessing either tungsten or depleted uranium, as for APDS, but the bomb's average density is only about 5 g/cc (14 tonnes in 3.1 m³). Length of 6.2 m times 5 tonnes per cubic meter gives a sectional density of 31 tonnes per square meter, which is about 15 meters of dirt. So Newton's impact depth approximation would predict a penetration depth one fourth of the reported 60-meter depth. I don't know how to resolve the discrepancy. The plane wouldn't fly if the bomb weighed four times as much. Maybe most of the bomb's mass is in a small, dense shaft in the middle of the bomb, which detaches on impact? | | |
| ▲ | creato 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Length of 6.2 m times 5 tonnes per cubic meter gives a sectional density of 31 tonnes per square meter, which is about 15 meters of dirt. So Newton's impact depth approximation would predict a penetration depth one fourth of the reported 60-meter depth. This seems to assume that the weapon would penetrate until it displaced an equal amount of dirt by mass, which seems like nonsense. Why would that be the case? | | |
| ▲ | kragen 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | You have the key phrase to Google right there in the text you quoted |
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| ▲ | barrkel 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How much does refinements of shape, terminal velocity, target characteristics change the calculation? | | |
| ▲ | kragen 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't know. Shape can change it to be arbitrarily bad; 14 tonnes of 5-micron-thick Eglin steel foil spread over a ten-block area wouldn't penetrate anything, just gently waft down, although it could give you some paper cuts. I suspect it can't make it much better, except in the sense of increasing sectional density by making the bomb longer and thinner, which we already know the results of. Velocity doesn't enter into Newton's impact depth approximation at all. It does affect things in real life, but you can see from meteor craters that it, too, has its limits. Target characteristics, no idea, but in a fast enough impact, everything acts like a gas. It's only at near-subsonic time scales that condensed-matter phenomena like elasticity come into play. Even at longer time scales the impact can melt things. This of course comes into conflict with the design objective of the bomb acting solid, so that it penetrates the soil instead of just mixing into it, and can still detonate when it comes to rest. I feel like buried plates of the same metal would have to be able to deflect it? And there are plenty of other high-strength alloys. | |
| ▲ | tguvot 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A system described in the 2003 United States Air Force report called Hypervelocity Rod Bundles[10] was that of 20-foot-long (6.1 m), 1-foot-diameter (0.30 m) tungsten rods that are satellite-controlled and have global strike capability, with impact speeds of Mach 10.[11][12][13] The bomb would naturally contain large kinetic energy because it moves at orbital velocities, around 8 kilometres per second (26,000 ft/s; Mach 24) in orbit and 3 kilometres per second (9,800 ft/s; Mach 8.8) at impact. As the rod reenters Earth's atmosphere, it would lose most of its velocity, but the remaining energy would cause considerable damage. Some systems are quoted as having the yield of a small tactical nuclear bomb.[13] These designs are envisioned as a bunker buster.[12][14] As the name suggests, the 'bunker buster' is powerful enough to destroy a nuclear bunker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment?useskin=ve... |
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| ▲ | jiggawatts 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I did some quick calculations: The energy of the impact from the stored kinetic energy gained by falling fro 15,000m is about the same as half a kiloton of TNT going off. That's focused into a circle just 80cm in diameter. | | |
| ▲ | kragen 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yet setting off half a tonne of TNT on the ground, or even just under it, won't penetrate 60 meters deep, or even 15; it will just blast open a shallow crater. A shaped charge will do only a little better. |
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| ▲ | giantg2 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not that crazy. It's simple physics. Drop a 15 ton metal lawn dart from 50,000 feet and it has a lot of energy. | |
| ▲ | algorithmsRcool 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No real secret sauce, the weapon weighs almost 30,000lbs and most of it is just hardened metal to make it heavy. The warhead is only ~5,300lbs of explosive |
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| ▲ | klipt 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > an entire home grown nuclear program It's not entirely home grown if they were part of the NPT is it? Signing the NPT (a pinky promise not to develop weapons) means other countries then help you develop nuclear energy, which of course has a lot of overlap to weapons tech... | |
| ▲ | the__alchemist 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | - MOP: High penetration; most of its payload is not explosive. (Something heavy). Designed so its body, fuse, explosives etc remain intact after penetrating deep.
- MOAB: Fuel air explosive for massive blast effect.
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| ▲ | testrun 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It seems that they have help from the Russians. Putin last week mentioned that there are quite a few Russian nuclear scientists in Iran. | | |
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| ▲ | Havoc 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yup. Twelve at main site two at Natanz | | |
| ▲ | benwills 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I've heard 6 at Fordow, and 30 or so Tomahawks across Natanz and Isfahan. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I heard the same as well, the reference was to an interview Trump gave on Fox. My expectation is that it was 3 rounds of 2 MOPs, hedging bets and potentially cresting a larger hole than drilling a hole one bomb at a time. |
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| ▲ | jmyeet 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So facts are thin on the ground currently. More will become clear in the coming days. I've heard different accounts all the way from 12 bunker busters were used on Fordo to none were used and the entrance was bombed after Iran was warne, kinda like a warning shot, to say "we can get you". What Iran does next depends on the extent of the damage. It could be nothing. It could be a token response. It could be escalation. But so far Iran has been the only rational actor in this region. Iran has been attacked with justification. Anytime someone says "preemptive strike" they mean "attack without justification". Their responses have been measured, rational, justified and proportionate. When Israel tried to previously escalate the conflict with Iran and drag the US into war with Iran, Iran just didn't take the bait. And this is despite Israel assassinating government officials, bombing Iranian embassies and bombing Iran for absolutely no reason. | | |
| ▲ | tbrownaw 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > But so far Iran has been the only rational actor in this region. Iran has been attacked with justification. Anytime someone says "preemptive strike" they mean "attack without justification". Their responses have been measured, rational, justified and proportionate. Either I'm misunderstanding (or misreading) something, or at least one of these sentences accidentallied a negation. |
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| ▲ | PaulHoule 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | When I was doing a postdoc in Germany I shared an office with a woman from Morocco so my office was a meeting point for many islamic woman including one from Iran who complained bitterly about how women were treated in her country but who did get the opportunity to get an advanced education. | | |
| ▲ | megous 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | How is this relevant to Trump bombing Iran? | | |
| ▲ | bigyabai 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's the most-salient comment you can write without being [flagged] [dead] for "off-topic" conversation. | | |
| ▲ | PaulHoule 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | The parent post was about Iranian women jobs getting jobs in engineering. Whatever restrictions are on them, they don't seem to have trouble getting STEM education. | | |
| ▲ | owebmaster 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | You said it in a way that sounded like no woman is oppressed if they can get high level education. | | |
| ▲ | anonymars 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I took the contradiction as the point: that they are oppressed and yet, surprisingly, not with respect to educational opportunity > including one from Iran who complained bitterly about how women were treated in her country but who did get the opportunity to get an advanced education |
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| ▲ | jordanb 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Consent isn't going to manufacture itself. |
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| ▲ | totetsu 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And meanwhile the biggest threat to all our security, the climate crisis goes unaddressed. |
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| ▲ | disposition2 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Worse than unaddressed, purposely preventing data collection / publication that would allow us to better assess the effects of climate change. > In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/ | |
| ▲ | seydor 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well, iran tried to address it by using nuclear energy to offset CO2 emissions, but alas the world attacked it. (i m not being serious) | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | and people like Greta Thunberg are labelled self-serving narcisists who deserve getting more scorn than our political leaders who we accept as being "just so". | | |
| ▲ | blueflow an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Greta does get called mean things not because of her beliefs, but there is something about her (personal) behavior that makes her unlikable to many people. | | |
| ▲ | mrbombastic 23 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Are you sure you are not just buying a narrative being pushed to you? Who benefits from Greta Thunberg the outspoken activist against climate change and Israel’s campaign in Gaza being labelled a narcissist? |
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| ▲ | harambae 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well it is odd how Greta Thunberg pivoted to Palestine as her issue, given that climate change is, in her own words, the greatest risk to us all. Feels a little bit narcissistic. | | |
| ▲ | Findecanor 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | She has of course the right to get involved in any issue she cares about, just as everyone else. But I think it was a bad move of hers to make the organisation "Fridays for Future" she had founded pivot towards other issues other than Climate Change.
She should have kept her engagements separate. | |
| ▲ | WickyNilliams 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A brutal war leaving untold numbers of children dead is a reasonable thing to focus on, is it not? Additionally, military operations are terrible for the climate. The US military is (was?) responsible for more pollution/emissions than most countries, for instance. | |
| ▲ | Swenrekcah 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There are many issues one cam care about and some can be more urgent even if not the most serious. I guess she’s hoping she can help humanitarian aid being delivered to Gaza where people are starving and dying right now. I respect her for her efforts in both goals, even if I care more about handling climate change. | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > pivoted to Palestine as her issue Is that the case? she supports many other causes too, and they do not conflict the idea of climate change being the greatest risk. In her own words climate justice and social justice are inseparable and I can see that point. We are now discussing the narcissism of Greta, a well meaning activist, rather than that of the president of peace, who just bombed Iran. The narcisism of the man who ran on "drill baby drill" is somehow acceptable, was exactly my point. | | |
| ▲ | dijit 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | She is spending nearly all of her political energy on Palestine and anti-Israel protests. So, its very fair for people to pick up on it, he movements are very public as she is a public figure now. |
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| ▲ | rapht an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > And meanwhile the biggest threat to all our security, the climate crisis goes unaddressed. That the climate crisis is the biggest threat to our security is the biggest fallacy of our times. It's not that climate change is unimportant, just that it needs to be evaluated to its fair potential consequences, compared to e.g. an all-out war. | |
| ▲ | hashstring 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | not just unaddressed, it worsens significantly… |
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| ▲ | jameslk 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is not the end. This is the beginning of another Iraq war, set up exactly the same way: claiming, with dubious proof, an imminent risk from weapons of mass destruction. Iran’s options here are to bomb US bases, which are a lot closer by, mine the Strait of Hormuz, blow up oil infrastructure in nearby countries who are harboring US bases. This might risk Iran a much larger war but the alternative of doing nothing and showing the world they won’t defend themselves is worse. The US will again bankroll another big, more expensive war to the tune of trillions more in debt. Another decade of war ahead with no end in sight. Meanwhile, new enemies will be made for the US as a young generation grows up living through this. The cycle repeats. |
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| ▲ | czhu12 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I could be wrong in the end, but my read is that there really isn't the appetite anywhere near the levels during post 9/11 or cold war to enter a war. Not in the US, and likely not in Iran either. Its hard to think of a full scale war that was started by the U.S. that didn't have popular approval at the time it was launched. | | |
| ▲ | alkonaut 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The lack of appetite in the US didn’t stop this. And the lack of appetite among normal Iranians won’t matter much. War is better for regime survival than peace. This is a country ruled by a very scared elite that isn’t held accountable for anything and whose only means of survival is creating continuous distractions from domestic failures. And it’s similar in Iran. | | |
| ▲ | abcd_f 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > And it’s similar in Iran. Nice. | | |
| ▲ | alkonaut 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks. Autocrat jokes basically writing themselves at this point. |
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| ▲ | gpt5 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Iranian regime has gone through serious military blows in the past and survived. Their best course of action is de-escalation and regaining domestic control. | | |
| ▲ | alkonaut 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes I was primarily thinking about regime survival in Washington, not Teheran. |
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| ▲ | czottmann 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I wish I could upvote this more than once. Well said. | |
| ▲ | ReptileMan 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >War is better for regime survival than peace. Not when your adversary has air superiority and they can just kill at will the leaders and elite and not the schmucks. Israel's tactics is to kill important people and links. | | |
| ▲ | alkonaut 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Iran doesn’t have air superiority (you probably misread which countries’ regime I meant…) | | |
| ▲ | ReptileMan 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Probably. Since of the three involved only Iran has a regime. The other two have democratically elected governments. | | |
| ▲ | tsimionescu 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | A democratically elected government that then flaunts the law and the constitution, such as illegally attacking another country without congressional approval, is a regime. Particularly when it has historically low approval ratings. | | |
| ▲ | ReptileMan 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | >But Trump is still running ahead of his approval rating at this point in his first term. And at this point in his second term, he’s actually running slightly ahead of Obama and Bush at this point in their second terms. From Rey Teixeira. So obviously not historically low. |
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| ▲ | zelphirkalt 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel's government is probably only in power as long as they continue to start and wage war against countries in the neighborhood. It was very convenient for them, that the attack of October 7th happened, just when ten thousands of people went on the streets to protest against their attempt to take away power from the judges and elevate themselves. In the US the election might have been tempered with, according to newest reports, so the government might not even be actually democratically elected and Trump is playing the autocrat's playbook, going as far as arresting political opponents without a warrant. Iran no question there. That makes 3 out of 3 in my book. I am not so sure your statement is footed on a solid base these days. | | |
| ▲ | samrus 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | lets not go crazy here. israel didnt conduct those attacks as a false flag to dodge the regime change |
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| ▲ | zelphirkalt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think you need to take a look at Gaza and revise a little about Israeli tactics. | |
| ▲ | samrus 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | how long did it take to kill bin laden, the most wanted man on the planet? and what happened to afghanistan more than a decade after he was actually killed this isnt software bro. its probabilistic and has high variance. even then the expected value is vietnam | |
| ▲ | youngtaff 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Iran will just employ asymmetrical means of defense and it will go on for years Israel’s decades long subjugation of the Palestinian people hasn’t brought them closer to peace | | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Israel’s decades long subjugation of the Palestinian people hasn’t brought them closer to peace Recent events have convinced me the goal is not peace, but extermination. | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That will be hard to do with a whole Iraq in between. I don't think Israel's military has what it takes. They already struggled in Gaza and are on the lifeline of US support. US could probably not even do it with massive amount of effort, and it would turn into a second Vietnam for them. Without troops on the ground no chance anyway. | | |
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| ▲ | samrus 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | that read would have predicted the US not bombing not bombing iran, and yet here we are. the current administration doesnt care what people want. trumps own base is against and they'll still do it. the "nothing ever happens" bet is not looking likely. with the calculus trump and netenyahu have shown, this looks like its heading towards US boots in iran | |
| ▲ | lonelyasacloud 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Its hard to think of a full scale war that was started by the U.S. that didn't have popular approval at the time it was launched. There's not been a President like the current incumbent. | |
| ▲ | UmGuys 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trump only wants to get richer. He'll do as many wars as he can get away with. Laws don't matter anymore. He just struck Iran because he felt like it and announced it on his social media network. This is beyond Idoicracy. | | |
| ▲ | powerapple 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You think the not-Trump president would do something different? Not an American, but I have assumed the outcome would be the same. | | |
| ▲ | UmGuys an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yes. Trump shredded the deal we had in place an decided on his own to strike without congress. No one else would have done this. |
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| ▲ | medlazik 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Missiles don't sell themselves |
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| ▲ | navane 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What I'm missing is that as one by one middle eastern countries are stomped to the curb, finding a balance between the countries gets harder. The more functional countries there are, the more room for negotiation, realignment, factions, and thus stability. We should want a muddy mess of interlinked allies. If after Egypt, Lybia, Syria, Iraq now Iran gets stomped, it's easier for the remaining powers to swing hard left out right instead of to continue muddying forward. | |
| ▲ | markus_zhang 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My hunch is Iran will bomb a US base, not causing any real damage, as a tough gesture and continue striking Israel. | |
| ▲ | Narretz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's a big leap. Nothing suggests a ground operation or occupation, which was the most costly part of the Iraq war, and importantly, was part of it from the beginning. Experience suggests that Trump would rather walk away from Iran after an exchange of strikes and claim victory then double down in a land war. | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which experience is that? | | |
| ▲ | Narretz an hour ago | parent [-] | | Trump's handling of military strikes/operations, which have been mostly symbolic. Killing Soleimani, and not retaliating to the retaliationary strikes. A completely useless strike on Shayrat airbase in Syria. Pulling out of Yemen strikes this year because it was ineffective (never admitting to this though). Trump wants to be known as a deal maker. I don't think that has changed, he's just become more delusional regarding the practicality. |
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| ▲ | huhtenberg 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Change of the Iran regime would help lessening the risk of a prolonged war. From what can be glanced from the news seeping through it seems that the population has been largely ready for it for a while now. | | |
| ▲ | UmGuys 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What is this commentary? We literally just attacked them. We punched them in the face. We're doing the war. Not them. | | |
| ▲ | huhtenberg 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | You must be trolling. In case you are not - the US attacked their nuclear research facilities. This is as far removed from attacking "them", as Iranian people, as it gets. | | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | So if China strategically bombed some US weapons research facilities, that would be just fine and normal? | |
| ▲ | UmGuys an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | ??? WTF are you on. If Iran bombs US research facilities it's okay? I don't understand at all. | |
| ▲ | zabzonk 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Because of course no Iranian people work at those bombed sites. | |
| ▲ | logicchains 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're the one who must be trolling. If China bombed American nuclear research facilities, I can't imagine many Americans would agree it's "not an attack on the American people". |
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| ▲ | throwawaynagain 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think you meant to say: Change of the US regime would help lessening the risk of a prolonged war. From what can be glanced from the news seeping through it seems that the population has been largely ready for it for a while now. | | |
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| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Dubious proof?! Iran has been blatantly pursuing nuclear weapons for decades - and the west (along with much of the rest of the world and the middle east) has been working to counter it the whole time. Remember that in the middle east, Iran is considered a dire enemy. | | |
| ▲ | gghhzzgghhzz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If it wanted nuclear weapons, it would just buy some from Pakistan. Their actions do not follow the conclusion you state. What is clear now though to any Iranian is that they should get nuclear weapons asap.
Diplomacy is just a tool used by the west to string you along while they get ready to bomb you | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Remember that in the middle east, Iran is considered a dire enemy. It's a dire enemy because they're Shia and the rest (with some exception in Eastern Saudi Arabia) are Sunni. | |
| ▲ | rocqua 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It is very likely false that Iran had nuclear weapons, or was within weeks of having them. This was also the position of US intelligence, until they were forced by higher-ups to speak different words. Of course, Iran very much wanted the ability to make a nuke, and they probably could have had one ready in 1 or 2 years. But the proof put forward in defense of this strike is claiming Iran was weeks away from nukes. That proof is dubious. (Also interesting to consider how US retreat from the nuclear deal under Trump 1 has affected and shaped the current situation) | |
| ▲ | jameslk 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes, dubious proof. A quick Google search can reveal this claim has been bs for decades, consistently evaluated by the US’ own intelligence, up until a day ago [0] But that doesn’t matter anymore 0. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056zqn6vvyo | |
| ▲ | littlestymaar an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | No it hasn't, you don't sit on 60%-enriched Uranium for 3 years (they announced it back in 2022!) if you plan to make a bomb. IAEA also confirmed that Iran didn't have ongoing military nuclear project. The reason why they raised their enrichment level was to raise their bargaining power to force the US to come back to the negotiation table in an attempt to get rid of the sanctions. They almost succeeded since US and Iran were supposed to meet last Sunday, but that was not taking Israel into account, which killed the chief negotiator and convinced Trump to bomb Iran just 3 days in the “two weeks” negotiation deadline he had set earlier this week. |
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| ▲ | logicchains 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Meanwhile, new enemies will be made for the US as a young generation grows up living through this. It's also breeding a generation of young Americans that consider Israel their enemy: https://time.com/6958957/growing-antisemitism-young-american... | | |
| ▲ | zelphirkalt 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | If these young Americans actually want to stand for any noble values, they better see Israel as an enemy, because otherwise they would be utter hypocrites. Currently there are few countries in the world, that act more despicable than Israel. Russia probably, but which else? I mean, what they do is state organized terrorism and the US outright supports it. |
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| ▲ | rocqua 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Do you think there will be boots on the ground? It seems more likely to me that Trump will escalate only through air attacks, fail to achieve much, and then either end the war by walking away, or throwing nukes. Quite different from the Iraq war. |
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| ▲ | crossroadsguy 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As someone who absolutely hates American bullying of a hegemony. This is one case where I believe people of Iran might come out beneficial of it. In the long term? I am not so sure. But will that happen? I doubt it. A country like America likes authoritarian regimes that like to listen to America. So Iranian things in the best interest of America would be the same theocracy but docile to America at least in the near future (or worse a full fledged military dictatorship which they anyway installed once). However I just hope/dream (and it's too much of a hope) for the sake of Iranian people - it ends up getting a democracy after all (maybe). However there is one thing clear - there is no rule based foreign relations, business, diplomacy anymore in this post truth world of ours. It's plain simple - you look after your own hind lest you find someone is at the door wanting to take it; might be an ally just as well. A side note: I can't thank four of my country's ex PMs [0] enough that they ensured we had nukes inspite of stringent sanctions from other nations which ironically, among them, almost all already had nukes :D The point is - we wish there were no nukes in our heating beautiful world; but tough luck, so you better get your own and get it soon. [0] esp. Indira Ghandhi; also, probably the only head of sate that actually succeeded in "selling freedom" thing. Something America specialises in and uses as a premise to routinely reduce various parts of the world to rubble. A positive outcome of such endeavours - its defence industry getting push from it and of course it goes about trying to re-build it, giving push to other of its industries, half or quarter way and then finds other sundry places to subject to this routine. |
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| ▲ | koevet 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | But wasn't Iran already docile to America? Sure, it wasn't a crystal clear ally like Saudi or the Gulf states, but behind the anti-Zionist propaganda and "evil US" blabbering, there were decades of backchannel negotiations, regional pragmatism, and even moments of cooperation — especially when mutual interests aligned, like in post-Taliban Afghanistan or the fight against ISIS. | | |
| ▲ | crossroadsguy 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No. Iran vehemently wanted nukes and the West (and its strong/rich local vassal states) vehemently didn't want Iran to have the nukes and Iran knew that and the West knew that Iran knew that. So no. (In fact SA has quite some money into Pakistani nukes; not sure what's the "access" agreements :P) | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | America and the broader west (and even much of the not-west) has been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades. A nuclear armed Iran means much the middle east, which considers Iran a dire enemy, would feel compelled to immediately launch their own nuclear weapons programs. | | |
| ▲ | fakedang 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | They could if they wanted to acquire nuclear weapons though. The Saudis explicitly funded the Pakistani nuclear programme with the option of access to nukes if required. |
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| ▲ | fakedang 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The point is - we wish there were no nukes in our heating beautiful world; but tough luck, so you better get your own and get it soon. Exactly my thoughts. We were absolutely blessed to have been developing our own nuclear capabilities at a time of intense international scrutiny. We were sanctioned to oblivion by the West for that until they realized (after Pakistan too developed their nukes, comfortably) that you can't simply ignore the elephant in the room. And we paid for it dearly too (with the assassinations of leaders in our nuclear programme). At this point, it should be expected of any rational self-serving sovereign nation that they should develop nukes, especially if they have a record of historical non-aggression. South Korea, modern Japan, the EU (especially those in direct threat of Russia like Poland)... I don't expect Germany to grow a pair to not rely on the US, any time in the near future. | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "A country like America likes authoritarian regimes that like to listen to America." I dunno. America seems to like Norway, and they don't seem particularly authoritarian. | | | |
| ▲ | vbezhenar 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Trump will declare that his BIG BEAUTIFUL BOMBS won the war, nuclear facilities are no more. Israel cannot claim otherwise, because that would be against big brother. Iran will continue covertly making nuclear bomb, but that will take more years, and will continue peace talks for now. Trump will get Nobel peace prize for peaceful bombing and will be happy. | | |
| ▲ | rocqua 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's a whole escalation you are forgetting. Iran will retaliate, to which the US wilk respond. That yields a situation where neither side can back out, but neither is putting enough pressure in the other to force them to stop. The way through seems limited to: - ground invasion
- nuclear annihilation
- regime change (no guarantee of success) If the regime change doesn't work, the options are horrible. And remember that the current Iran regime is the result of a US backed regime change, which allowed radical elements to mobilize hatred against the US. | |
| ▲ | crossroadsguy 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As if Israel has been giving two flying fracks about what big brother would think. Besides Israel as a nation is too cunning to not be able to subdue someone as dumb and facetious as Trump with flattery alone. Trump getting Nobel - yes, knowing who all the Swedes have given it to I won't be surprised at all. |
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| ▲ | artoghrul 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The military industrial complex always wins in the US, even if the whole reason why you get elected is because you were against it. A majestic mockery of democracy. |
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| ▲ | HellDunkel 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | There is more to be said about the voters than about the military industrial complex here. | | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The voters don't decide if a president can bomb something or not. Or, in the case of the US, how much it can bomb. | |
| ▲ | seydor 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | the voters cannot be held accountable, but politicians can |
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| ▲ | v5v3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I am confused. Iran knew USA would come along one day, and they knew the max capability of the bombs they would drop. So why did they not go a lot deeper/reinforce to a level where the b52 payloads cannot reach. |
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| ▲ | christophilus 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | How do we know they didn’t? I’d be surprised if this is actually one and done. | |
| ▲ | kkarakk 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | pretty basic - they know they have no chance of hiding from the US. so they go plausibly in reach but outside of being casually bombed by missiles from israel.
the moment they go deep US will go after them hard. |
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| ▲ | apu 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Incredible to see the bloodlust and warmongering here, cloaked in the language of technical interest. |
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| ▲ | muzani 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I find it incredibly sad. It tugs at a lot of old memories, as we've been talking about an Iran war since I was in college. Plenty of friends on both sides. Bloodlust is one thing, but the dehumanization is just far worse. Maybe they go hand in hand - you can't want to see someone die unless you think of them as inhuman. There's something about social media where it has been amplifying this dehumanization as well. So another layer of sadness where it feels like we could have, should have prevented this. Like an asteroid strike or a global pandemic, it feels like one of those things that should never happen until it does. I remember looking at 80000hours and thinking, nah... nuclear warfare will never happen, let's focus on AI. | | |
| ▲ | petesergeant 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You have plenty of friends who are supporters of the regime in Iran and its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, or just plenty of Iranian friends? Those feel like very distinct categories. |
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| ▲ | buangakun 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As usual, the people who like war are the people who've never gone to war. They cower behind their the comfort of their home, AC, keyboards, western paycheck and standards of living while trying to be (seen) as "rational" and "stoic". They talk like there is good sides and bad sides in war, right sides and wrong sides. Most of them are these small powerless men who dream of power fantasy. I wonder, will today's children who is seeing this spectacles of war in 4K, all gore and guts and destruction, will grow up to be better leaders for all? Or are they going to grow up just like their parents, small powerless trigger-happy men filled with mid-life crisis. | | |
| ▲ | blakehawkins 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | False dichotomy final boss | |
| ▲ | omeid2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The new generation is far more anti war than the 90s hippies. The social media might have set society back on some fronts, but on some fronts, like cross-border understanding and humanisation, it has been a blessing. |
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| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | But have you seen how cool the bunker buster bombs are? Like, how, incredible the engineering there is? It's going to be so awesome see those in action! The same people would have drooled over the engineering of concentration camps. "Yeah it's sad there's some human casualties, but you have to appreciate the thought that went into it, and imagine doing that at that scale!" | |
| ▲ | khazhoux 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why do you see it as bloodlust though? If (if) this destroyed a nuclear weapons program, that is good for the world. No one can predict the downstream consequences of today, but I fail to see an argument for why the world benefits from another nation getting the bomb. | | |
| ▲ | WastedCucumber 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I do see this as bloodlust as well. I think the attacks aren't just about a nuclear weapons program. First, the program, according to US intelligence, does not exist. I'm inclined to believe them. [1] Second, unrelated infrastructure has been attacked, including energy infrastructure, hospitals, and state media. All of that points not to the destruction of a nuclear weapons program, but of a country. The Israeli government claims to want regime change now... but that claim only came some time after the attacks started and there's no reason in that case to bomb hospitals. The Israeli government claimed the hospitals were "hiding" missle sites, but haven't presented any evidence of that, and have used that excuse many times before now, and were clearly lying. Ah, plus the countries involved are engaged in a separate act of bloodlust at the moment. Which doesn't directly mean that the attacks against Iran are the same, but it certainly colors the picture. [1] https://apnews.com/article/gabbard-trump-intelligence-iran-n... | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's naive to think that is the question to think about here. Did you believe in Saddam's WMDs as well? With less snark, this will only end peacefully as soon as possible with some diplomacy, or in a massive humanitarian disaster. | |
| ▲ | LAC-Tech 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The only nation in the middle east with a nuclear weapons program is Israel. Why not destroy that one? It's objectively more of a threat to the region than Iran's. | | |
| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > only nation in the middle east with a nuclear weapons program is Israel. Why not destroy that one? Put simply: they have it. One of the unfair truths of nuclear geopolitics is the power asymmetry between nuclear and non-nuclear states. (And the collective interest of the former in nuclear NIMBYism.) |
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| ▲ | tim333 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Won't someone please think of the precious nuclear enrichment facilities? | |
| ▲ | GuardianCaveman 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Incredible to see the people who have zero contact with extremist Muslims or familiarity with what the Quran and hadiths actually say or understand Iran in any way talking about how Iran is the victim or burying their heads in the sand with their coexist bumper stickers acting like we can just be nice and everyone will get along. | | |
| ▲ | viccis 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >extremist Muslims or familiarity with what the Quran and hadiths You can easily find stuff in the Bible and the Torah or Talmud that would shock you. And Israel even acts on the latter. But conveniently it's just the Muslim world, one beset with colonial extraction for centuries, that you care about. Not the people in the US who supported wars killings hundreds of thousands over the last few decades for religious reasons. Hmm. | | |
| ▲ | EvgeniyZh 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > the Muslim world, one beset with colonial extraction for centuries Surely you mean on the side of extractors? The Ottoman Empire practiced mass movement of people (sürgün), basically settler colonialism; earlier Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates are among the largest empires in history, and their population was mass converted to Islam. |
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| ▲ | timeon 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > acting like we can just be nice and everyone will get along "We"? As far as I know US is not part of that region. Also I remember current president was campaigning on not starting wars. And yet here we are. | |
| ▲ | adhamsalama 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Bro just one more war in the middle east bro it'll be good this time bro they're terrorists bro just believe me bro | |
| ▲ | LAC-Tech 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It feels disingenuous to talk of extremist muslims when we have extremist jews bombing 4 countries in 2 years, and committing a genocide. Iran has killed a lot less civilians than Israel and it isn't even close. I'm much less worried about them getting the bomb than I am about the fact Israel already has it. |
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| ▲ | BartjeD 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Bombing another country is literally a declaration of war. With explosions. Isn't an act of congress required for this, in the US? |
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| ▲ | riffraff 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Countries stopped doing declarations of war decades ago, cause you know, war is not something _we_ do, it's something bad people do. _We_ do special operations, interventions, liberations, preventive strikes, weapon destructions. | | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | And then you make movies on how you were the good guys, and that's how we all will remember it. | | |
| ▲ | whilenot-dev 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm all for a collective change there, so every foreign movie just ends in the same deus ex machina moment: every protagonist gets bombed out of existence. Might get repetitive after a while, but I guess that's the idea. |
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| ▲ | jiggawatts 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Also the enemy is always a guerrilla, terrorist, or a rebel and works for a regime, dictator, or king. |
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| ▲ | IceHegel 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Any reasonable understanding of the term "war" obviously includes bombing a country's strategic military sites. Today Congressmen's main job is soliciting bribes. I expect they want their name on as few pieces of paper connecting them to a conflict as possible. They are not in charge of the government. | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 10 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Isn't an act of congress required for this, in the US? Yes, but when only when you really need to go to a full wartime economy. Otherwise is just business as usual. | |
| ▲ | GuardianCaveman 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Obama bombed a lot of countries with no act of congress: Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, etc. I don’t know the legality but plenty of precedent besides him. | | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | By the body of American legislative tradition, no this is not an act of war. In fact, we haven't declared one since WWII. | | |
| ▲ | BartjeD 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If Mexico bombed area 51 with bunker busters and stealth planes, it would be interpreted as a declaration of war. By anyone. The world over. If you're seriously saying this isn't war, bombing Iran, you're just engaging in willfull self deception at this point. | | |
| ▲ | zorobo 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don’t recall USA saying death to Mexico | | |
| ▲ | BartjeD 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | So if we change the example to Canada, responding to threats of annexation, you'l engage on the point in substance? | |
| ▲ | dunekid 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Squint a bit harder and see if US toppled a democratically elected government in Mexico and installed a cruel dictator for oil? And shot down a civilian flight from Mexico? Maybe not. |
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| ▲ | einpoklum 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C11-2... Use of military force requires congressional approval. Well, in principle. In practice, the US executive does not observe this restriction, or at most - makes a flimsy connection the 2001 AUMF following the twin towers attack. The courts do not enjoin it from using military force pretty much arbitraly; and congress does not impeach nor even adopt declarative denunciations of this behavior. | | |
| ▲ | Refreeze5224 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | George Washington was the first president to take military action without congressional approval, so on the sense of precedent providing legality, it's quite an old concept. |
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| ▲ | alkonaut 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Bombing government military infrastructure (not terrorist cells or similar) is as clear as it gets. If this isn’t an act of war then nothing is. And that’s a terrifying thought because that means a single person can start a war without congressional approval. Even impeachment doesn’t help prevent war since it’s after the fact. What happens if a president orders strikes on a friendly country? It could be due to dementia, narcissistic personality disorder, personal vendettas (hypothetically, in real life I trust the US wouldnt elect that kind of person). |
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| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US, as rational thinking US citizens may have thought it to be, no longer exists. In fact, it may never have actually existed. | | |
| ▲ | lotyrin 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Intelligent, rational, empathetic people need to realize that when they are doing theory of mind for others (and especially groups) they are projecting their own qualities where they do not exist. |
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| ▲ | khazhoux 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That ship sailed decades ago, my friend. | |
| ▲ | blahyawnblah 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No. The president is the commander in chief. I can't remember the president or the situation but a long time ago a president attacked and said "I'm sending the troops" then senate/congress had to approve it or troops would be stranded. | | |
| ▲ | Anduia 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You are thinking about Truman sending the troops to help South Korea. However, he had UN backing. The War Powers Act of 1973 was approved literally to avoid it happening in the future. |
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| ▲ | fastball 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Impressively prescient on the part of the Top Gun sequel. This is basically the plot, just with more close calls and less "well that was kinda easy". |
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| ▲ | ianks an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| No one in their right mind wants the Supreme Leader armed with nukes… but there are many ways to prevent this outcome. |
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| ▲ | Bluestein an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Another bunch of smoking craters, another sovereign warning shot. Iran’s nuclear facilities go up in flames yet again, and the script rolls on—same actors, same lines.- The elite nuclear club, forged in fire and sealed with hypocrisy, has made its position unmistakably clear: if you're not already in, you're never getting in. The path to national security does not run through treaties or IAEA inspections — it runs through enrichment, warheads, and the credible threat of annihilation. The lesson from history is as brutal as it is consistent: Those who gave up their deterrents — Saddam, Gaddafi, Ukraine — earned their place not at the table, but under the table.- Non-proliferation, once wrapped in the language of peace and stability, now reads more like a cartel agreement. An exclusive arrangement to ensure the existing shareholders retain total dominance over the levers of this existential power. Meanwhile, aspiring states are lectured on restraint while having their infrastructure surgically removed via high explosives, or worse, sanctioned into collapse.- It’s not deterrence anymore. It’s deterrence for some. The rest? They’re told to disarm and die quietly. Welcome to the age of managed apocalypse — where those with the bomb hold the moral high ground by sheer altitude, and everyone else is collateral in the performance of global order.- |
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| ▲ | herbst 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > No increase in radiation levels have been detected, the UN's nuclear watchdog says If true they failed to destroy the material (just like last time when the US brought chaos over the world by creating a war out of "they have bombs" lies) If not true, did they actually try to make the world a more poisonous place? |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | > If true they failed to destroy the material Not true. Caverns can collapse without leaking enough into atmosphere to trigger detection. The simple answer is we don’t really know; we may not be able to know. | | |
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| ▲ | pelorat 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Can't wait for the decades of Islamist attacks that will follow here in Europe thanks to the USA. |
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| ▲ | twixfel 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | And then for the same Americans who utterly despise Europe to declare how Europe has become a shithole due to refugees and boost support for our right wing populist parties. |
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| ▲ | gorgoiler 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As I understand it, conventional explosives derive their destructive force from using chemical energy to vaporize material so quickly that it explodes forming a destructive shockwave. With a kinetic energy impacted like the MOP bunker buster, does the material vaporize ahead of the munitions? Is the destructive shockwave the munition casing itself, or perhaps the vaporized breccia being pushed in front of it? In some ways I imagine it like a nail being driven into the ground but my gut feeling is that, at such high impact energies, something more complicated is going on. For example, with small calibre ballistics you can have many kinds of terminal action: from square edged paper cutting rounds used to make clean holes in targets, to subsonic rounds transferring energy into a target, all the way up to supersonic rounds which drive a shock cone through a “soft” target to cause trauma. |
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| ▲ | seydor 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't think it's going to end here. US wants to control Iran , to starve China of its oil. US+Israel already have set up rich middle east countries as bulwarks. The whole middle east is setting up the stage for future proxy wars between US & china/russia |
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| ▲ | Panoramix 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree it's not going to end here, but I disagree on the reason. China doesn't rely on oil that much anymore as they have leaned heavily into nuclear and solar; further, Iran only provides about 12%. | |
| ▲ | v5v3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Starve China of its oil? Wouldn't Russia or Venezuela take up the slack. | | |
| ▲ | seydor 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | yep sure, not starve, but every piece of containment helps | | |
| ▲ | v5v3 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | But if this happened, the price of oil would go up for everyone. As reducing supply increases demand for the remaining. |
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| ▲ | dgb23 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | But none of that is necessary. Why is the US suddenly so hostile towards China? | | |
| ▲ | seydor 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think because China has very high growth momentum that surpasses american living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass american security standards too. China purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most west countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries ask for their help. That's why china's growth must be curbed, fast. | | |
| ▲ | dudefeliciano 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is the biggest leopards ate my face moment. After decades of outsourcing to china and pandering to the chinese market for a quick buck, we are now surprised that they have become rich and decide their growth must be curbed. Honestly we in the west deserve everything that is coming to us | | |
| ▲ | fastball 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | If the West lets it happen, sure. Still seems like there is some amount of time to reverse course and stop handing the future to China if the West so desires. But democracies these days can't help but tie themselves in knots, so not holding my breath. |
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| ▲ | inglor_cz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Chinese growth spurt is basically over already. Gone are the days when their economy grew by 10 per cent y/y, nowadays it is under 5. Still a respectable number, but the trend is going down. Yours is an interesting conspiracy theory, though. Most people would say that this war is obviously about Israel. |
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| ▲ | tim333 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Because China started threatening war. It's not really sudden. It's from Xi coming to power and saying he'll take Taiwan. | |
| ▲ | throwaway_dang 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Because the U.S. wants global hegemony and time is against the U.S. so there is a rush to crush China sooner rather than later. |
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| ▲ | s_ting765 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Which nuclear sites? https://x.com/iaeaorg/status/1936650574939685121 |
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| ▲ | v5v3 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| All the talk in the west is about extreme Muslims, or extreme Jews. But every group has their extremists. We need to not forget the extreme Christians... |
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| ▲ | DobarDabar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Certified oy vey moment |
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| ▲ | snickerbockers 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm concerned by the appearance that the Trump administration was negotiating with the Iranians in bad faith to buy time for an Israeli operation Before America joined the war it was a bad look since it benefits us but it still wasn't outside the realm of possibilities that Israel did this of its own initiative since they're obviously insane. Now that we've taken advantage of the opportunity, it really looks like Trump may have been negotiating in bad faith. I'm personally of the opinion that the Israeli operation forced Trump's hand and he realized that he can't trust the Iranians going forward since they have no reason to trust us going forward. That's just my opinion; I obviously can't expect anybody else negotiating nuclear non-proliferation (or anything else related to war or peace) with America in the future to have such an optimistic outlook on this turn of events. If the Israelis did force his hand then I personally can accept that he made the tough call that needed to be made in that moment, but then the next call needs to be distancing us from the Israelis because we can't have an ally that fucks everything up when we're negotiating, *especially* when they literally assassinated the guy who was negotiating with Trump on Iran's behalf. |
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| ▲ | mukmuk 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I have gone from feeling vaguely positive about Israel as a modern center of innovation to believing the Likud government and its many supporters are genocidal child-starving war criminals who massively distort American politics via dirty money (eg Ritchie Torres) and possibly sexual blackmail (eg Maxwell). |
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| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I was not very happy with the settlements of West Bank ongoing for decades, but kind of thought every side is to blame and the situation is complex. It's not complex anymore. |
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| ▲ | buyucu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If this doesn't convince Iran to make nuclear bombs, nothing will. |
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| ▲ | jtfrench 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Bodes well this does not. |
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| ▲ | pythonic_hell 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It’s sad to see how Europe leaders are reacting to this and further show how Europe is a vassal state to the US in all but name. Europe is going to have to pick up the tab for the inevitable refugee and migrant crisis that will result from a wider war in the region - which they won’t be able to afford thanks to Trumps 5% military spending demand. Imagine what it means for Europe if a fraction of 90 million people (5 times larger than Syria) suddenly find themselves in a situation that would necessitate fleeing for survival. |
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| ▲ | econ 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We have all this technology but you can't get a decent overview of any conflict. There is liveuamap which seems to have data and certainly is better than any other website I know of but the ui is a horrific mess. I think it is important for the people of the world to get an idea how things are unfolding. It should be an animation of the exchanges both verbally and physically. Have a complete set of news sources for each action. The BBC is not something you can trust to report on anything. I can't even see a date with the article? Pictures of the situation room??? Trump's name written in gold??What a waste of my time. Games from the 90's provide better visualizations than anything online today. |
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| ▲ | mrkeen 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's not in governments' interests to allow their citizens information without taking the opportunity to spin it first. |
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| ▲ | batmaniam 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How the heck does a US president have military powers so powerful and broad? If congress can only declare war, it doesn't make sense to me that the president can put the entire country at risk of war by directly bombing another country. Like then at that point, congress has to approve right..? Because the damage is already done. It's a big slap on the face at the global stage, with no room for political face-saving. The damage being already done to both global reputation and national sovereignty. There's no going back. If another country bombed the US, and then their system of government was like, "oh well it isn't technically war cause it was just our single head honcho making his own decision. But good news, our second government entity officially declared not going to war with you, kthxbye srry lol", that logic isn't going to fly in the US. The US is gonna retaliate and consider it an act of war, because it was bombed by a foreign power... damage being already done. How the heck can Trump do this. I get it if the US got attacked, then it's useless to wait for congress to decide war-or-not-war... but this literally puts the US on a direct war path with Iran. the US literally just bombed another country unprovoked. And Trump said he hated war, which was his platform when running. He was gonna end the war in Ukraine because nobody wins and war is nasty. What is going on.. why is Congress so spineless too. They probably won't even do anything. This is the worst timeline ever. |
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| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Israel declared war on Iran, and now the US has joined Israel's side in it. There is no other interpretation when bombs and missiles are sent 'in anger' to a sovereign nation, no matter which side is "bad". Hint: all sides are bad. | | |
| ▲ | erikerikson an hour ago | parent [-] | | Sides are a distraction. Violence and conflict creators and propagators are bad. |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > How the heck does a US president have military powers so powerful and broad? If congress can only declare war [...] It's been this way since the Vietnam war, it not the Korean war. Every president since then has been able to engage in relatively small military operations without congressional approval. And the UN is what ended formal declarations of war, too. Basically Congress can stop military actions started by the President by taking the money away or not providing it to begin with, but if the operation is small then it's a fait accompli before Congress can do anything about it. See the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Libya, Syria, etc. | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In America, there's nothing unusual here: Presidents can, and very frequently have, decided to do military strikes on targets. This is not illegal in American law. | |
| ▲ | wsatb 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > And Trump said he hated war, which was his platform when running. What’s going on.. He’s a career con artist, that’s what’s going on. |
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| ▲ | Eavolution 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I thought part of Trump's campaign was that he'd distance the US from foreign conflicts and not get involved so much. Is he trying to renege on every single thing he campaigned on? |
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| ▲ | wvbdmp 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think this one is less of a Trump flip-flop in particular. It seems that US presidents just can’t defy these things, even when their whole point is being an outsider. The pressures and propaganda a president is subject to must hit substantially different. Or, if you will, the realities they have to face. Obama ran on closing Gitmo and even that he couldn’t do in two terms (which seems especially absurd in light of Trump’s evident power to just make things happen unilaterally). I’m no Trump supporter but I do still think he was in a unique position to ignore this sort of stuff. Pity it wasn’t enough. |
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| ▲ | 0xbadcafebee 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Could be a good way to boost the economy amidst a trade war while simultaneously doubling-down on protectionism. On the one hand we usually profit from wars, on the other hand we lose trading partners when we do our usual human rights violations shtick. I predict this is a ploy to try to get us into a war, so Trump can have his third term, rejecting calls to step down "because we're at war". It's a little early, but our kids are already used to being in 20-year-long pointless wars in the Middle East. |
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| ▲ | Findecanor 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I think the contrary. Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which more than a quarter of the world's oil gets shipped.
The world price of oil is then expected to go up, and the US economy is very oil-dependent. Other oil producers would profit from this, ... including Russia's state-run oil company, which would help them fund their war in Ukraine. | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | On the contrary, nobody wants a nuclear armed Iran. It's been an open not-even-secret for decades that America is very active, on many fronts, in trying to delay or remove Iran's growing capability to create nuclear weapons. | | |
| ▲ | lunarboy 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That Trump's own appointed Head of Intelligence denied? The least republicans can do is align their own fucking story. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | That would help, but it doesn't change the fact that America and the broader west has been working hard for decades to counter Iran's nuclear weapons program. |
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| ▲ | t0lo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | By now, most people trust a nuclear armed stable iran over an erratic, war hungry nuclear armed israel |
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| ▲ | mandmandam 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > we usually profit from wars That's a huge lie, if 'we' is to be read as 'Americans' and not 'the 1%'. 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck [0]. 'We' - taxpayers - 'spent' trillions and trillions of dollars on war in the middle east. What was the return on investment? We could have housed every American, eliminated student debt, gone 100% clean energy, and ended world hunger; with change left over. 0 - https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-pa... |
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| ▲ | LAC-Tech 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I can't help but conclude the primary rogue state in region is not Iran - it's Israel: - Did not sign the non-proliferation treaty - Does not allow IAEA inspectors into their country - Nuclear weapons program widely believed to have started from material stolen from the US - Prime Minister wanted by the ICC for war crimes. Since 2023, they have: - Invaded and occupied parts of Syria and Lebanon - Bombed Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen - Killed nearly 70,000 people in Gaza The Islamic Republic of Iran appears sane, rational, and peaceful by comparison. Quite an achievement! |
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| ▲ | dudefeliciano 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | even more so, future humans may see Iran as one of the only moral states for doing "something" against Israel | |
| ▲ | twixfel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Israel was a mistake, easily one of the biggest foreign policy blunders of the 20th century. Look at everything that has followed from its creation. It is breathtaking how much Europe and America chooses to suffer for this small colonial outpost. We need a spine here in the West, we need to cut these lunatics adrift. | |
| ▲ | vbezhenar 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | US will sell their mother to a devil if that makes good profit. Who cares about Gaza people? | | |
| ▲ | jampekka 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | US support for Israel isn't even about profit. It's about corruption. |
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| ▲ | curiousgal 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I am absolutely flabbergasted that very few are pointing this out. People seem to rally against Iran because of some hypothetical scenario where it could become...exactly like Israel. |
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| ▲ | mrs6969 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So russia can not attack a nuclear facility in ukraine, but us can in iran ? What am I missing ? |
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| ▲ | jiggawatts 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | a) Russia plans to conquer Ukraine and use its resources. Nuclear power plants are very expensive and critical to industry. Russia wants to capture these for their own use, not blow them up and irradiate the countryside that they wish to be a part of their own country! b) Active reactors contain very "hot" decay products that are very bad for your health if atomised by an explosion and spread around. Chernobyl is the prototypical example of this. Enriched Uranium is less radioactive than natural Uranium, that's the point! Natural Uranium would "trigger itself" prematurely due to its constant background decay radiation. | | |
| ▲ | tgv 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | My knowledge in these matters is limited, but natural uranium can't trigger itself, can it? At least, it can't produce the classical chain reaction, as there's not enough U235 to sustain it, I think. |
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| ▲ | IceHegel 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I voted for Trump. I'd support his impeachment now. He has betrayed his core by letting Israel suck our country into another Middle Eastern conflict, after promising to do the opposite. |
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| ▲ | SG- 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | voting a bozo in gets you bozo outcomes. | | |
| ▲ | lunarboy 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I can't believe OP is saying this like some "I'm actually smart" moment. Play stupid games to win stupid prizes, except it affects the entire world now |
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| ▲ | bravesoul2 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | r/leopardsatemyface | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I understand what you mean, but we've been in this conflict for decades already. America and loads of other countries have been working to stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. Remember that in much of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy. A nuclear armed Iran would result in the rest of the middle east rapidly pursuing nukes by way of defense against Iran - a country most of the middle east views as a combatant and an enemy. I won't comment or discuss who you voted for - that isn't germane here. What is important is that America has been working for decades - often quite blatantly, sometimes with the thinnest veneer of deniability - to stop Iran from getting nukes. We're now just saying the quiet part out loud. | | |
| ▲ | einpoklum 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | > America and loads of other countries have been working to stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. 1. America is a continent. You probably mean the USA. 2. What the US has been working to stop Iran from is being independent of its near-control - which it had gained with the 1953 CIA-fomented coup d'etat against the Mossadegh government, and lost again in 1979 when the Islamist-headed faction of the rebellion gained power. While it's true that the US would not like Iran to have nuclear weapons, that has served more as an excuse to try and suppress it rather than actual motivation. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, America is a country - you demonstrate this by knowing exactly which country I refer to when I say the word. Pop quiz: how many countries have the word "America" in their name? #2 is not worth responding to, as you didn't feel the need to respond to my broader point: anti-proliferation in the middle east has been a long-pursued initiative by the west and much of the rest of the world for decades. |
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| ▲ | sonofhans 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It boggles my mind that you ever thought Trump had a principled stand on anything. Most of the world has known since the 1980s exactly who Donald Trump is. |
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| ▲ | Ozzie_osman 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I imagine every reasonably-sized country looking at this and thinking: "well, we'd be idiots not to have nuclear weapons by any means necessary." This will be one of the single-most proliferation-inducing events in history, maybe save Hiroshima and Nagasaki. |
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| ▲ | energy123 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The opposite. They're thinking "if we try to do this, we will die, because their intelligence knows where we are at all times". This war is quite paradigm shifting in multiple ways, and I'm hopeful it serves as a strong deterrent. No longer will soldiers be the first to die. The leadership is now first to die, and within a week. That significantly alters the incentives for pursuing war. This was never the case until today. | | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Just wait for China to get rich enough to counter American military dominance, and then ally with them for protection. Iran is already half way to becoming a Chinese vassal state, either it falls apart or becomes one completely after this. | |
| ▲ | riffraff 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Knowing "where you are" is irrelevant. Iraq was invaded under the pretense of having weapons of mass destruction, so the rational thing to do is having them anyway, cause the US can bomb you anytime if you don't. Meanwhile, North Korea is 100% fine. | | |
| ▲ | energy123 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | The rational thing is to be killed in an airstrike when you are 10% into your nuclear program? I don't understand the justification for this opinion. |
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| ▲ | seydor 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | a rogue nuke can "accidentally slip in" from another evil country. a few more nukes and you're now un-nukeable. deterrence works. we should admit it | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is the ultimate gamble here. On one path, those considering a nuke could be deterred after realizing the Trump administration is willing to use that as a reason to attack. On the other path, countries could either decide the risk of attack is necessary or estimate the risk of future administrations acting similarly as low enough to go for the bomb. |
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| ▲ | kilroy123 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To be fair. I think what happened in Ukraine did far more to cause nations to think like this. The US convinced Ukraine to give up its nukes and return them to Russia. Russia was supposed to never attack in exchange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum | | | |
| ▲ | TheAlchemist 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yep, that's how it ends. I expect, there will be many many countries with nukes in 2030. Even a country like Poland, which is part of Nato, announced that it will seek to acquire nuclear weapons in the future. | | | |
| ▲ | dundarious 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think you put a few too many negatives in that first sentence, and are missing a clause. As-is, you're just imagining them not thinking something. | | | |
| ▲ | muzani 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We started thinking that after seeing Palestine get bombed and US vetoing every attempt at aid. We used to be a neutral country since independence, but Ukraine and Gaza proved that the world will just stand aside and watch the neutral countries get exterminated by nuclear nations. | | |
| ▲ | BLKNSLVR 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Strangely (maybe), the US seems to be vassal to Israel. The extent to which condemning something approaching genocide is accused of being an anti-semitic position is... telling. Not to say that there aren't ridiculous levels of complexity to the whole situation, but the pendulum is being held very far to one side by the king. |
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| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The issue is that a nuclear armed Iran (and remember that Iran is largely detested in the middle east, and is broadly considered to be a destabilizing enemy) would result in the rest of the middle east feeling compelled to quickly pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. No one wants an nuclear armed Iran. | |
| ▲ | viccis 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Russia-Ukraine war already did that. Ukraine let us talk them into giving up their nukes, and see what happened. Iran having nukes would mean peace in the Middle East. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Iran having nukes (and recall that in the broader middle east, Iran is largely considered a dangerous enemy) would result in the rest of the middle east pursuing their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran. Iran having nukes is a very bad idea - that's why the west , and even countries beyond, have been working for decades to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. |
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| ▲ | FuckButtons 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Any self respecting dictator could see the writing on the wall after Gadaffi, or for that matter, Sadam. A domestic nuclear program though is still not a simple proposition. | |
| ▲ | seydor 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I wouldn't be surprised to see an end to non-proliferation treaty and large nuclear alliances. | |
| ▲ | IceHegel 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is obviously correct. Nuclear weapons = sovereignty. UN recognition is a piece of paper. 9 countries exist. So much for self-determination. | |
| ▲ | I_am_tiberius 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I wouldn’t be surprised if North Korea is now doubling its efforts and even offering Russia additional resources to help it acquire nuclear capabilities. | | |
| ▲ | shepherdjerred 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Doesn't NK already have nukes? | | |
| ▲ | kelipso 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | More means better deterrence I guess. Didn’t China decide to build a shitton more to match the US numbers recently? | |
| ▲ | I_am_tiberius 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're right. Didn't know! | | |
| ▲ | FergusArgyll 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is the kind of high information commenters we have on HN when it comes to non CS related issues |
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| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | North Korea has nukes, which has seriously changed the calculus in the region. Worse is that they are a vassal state of China. |
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| ▲ | jimbob45 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You say that but Iran couldn’t even escalate their rhetoric post-strike because “Every American is now a legitimate target” is now a tired refrain rather than a feared declaration. The lesson here is not to make idle threats against half of the world that you don’t honestly mean. | | |
| ▲ | firesteelrain 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Iran can’t project power. Other than employing their terrorist proxies - they are in a no win situation. Russia and China can’t project power either. Only few countries can and the US is the best at it. |
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| ▲ | khazhoux 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't follow your logic. You're saying that there exists some country capable of a nuclear weapons program (an exceedingly difficult thing), that for some reason has not actually built one, and now that they see Iran pummeled for trying to build theirs... is now incentivized to finally go for it?? | | |
| ▲ | dingaling 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Turkey, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Finland and even Switzerland* are all assessed as having the capability but having refrained for political reasons. * the Swiss nuclear weapons programme ran for over four decades during the Cold War |
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| ▲ | partiallypro 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | History disagrees with you, and Iran is the #1 state sponsor of terrorism. They were even providing Russia with arms for their invasion of Ukraine. Let's not equate them with many others, such as Poland, etc. Iran absolutely should not be allowed under any circumstances to have a nuclear weapon. If they were as close as what intelligence seems to indicate (though I know that's hard to believe after the Iraq war, but we aren't in a ground war so the burden of proof is understandably less) then I frankly don't think it would have mattered if it were Kamala, Biden, or Trump in office. The facilities were getting bombed. The scenario was already war gamed during the Biden administration, it was already a possible outcome. The G7 already backed this idea that Iran can't have this before, and they'll do it again. The US doesn't stand alone on this, Saudi Arabia and basically everyone in the region and world doesn't want Iran having a nuke sans Russia/China. I'm not even sure if Russia/China really want it either. It's just common sense. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is absolutely the case. We've been collectively fighting to stop Iran from getting nukes for decades. In much of the middle east, Iran is considered a serious enemy. Iran getting nuclear weapons would mean the rest of the middle east would instantly feel compelled to get their own. |
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| ▲ | neilv 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In that reporting stream, at 22:58, "White House releases photos of Trump in Situation Room"[1], I'm struck that we are in a timeline that is not only dark, but surreal. It sounds trite to say from a position of relative comfort and distance, but I can only hope that someday our better selves will find peace with each other, around the globe. But we won't be able to undo all the injustices and atrocities that we inflicted upon each other. We know these wrongs as we are doing them, and they will remain upon us. [1] https://i.imgur.com/sR8YhcY.png |
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| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Nothing odd about that. I'm thinking of photos of Obama and Hillary in the situation room, observing the strikes on Bin Laden in realtime. | |
| ▲ | seydor 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Remote War photos are now commonplace. The striking thing is that he is wearing his MAGA hat, as if he purposely wants to piss off his base who had delusions of "no wars president" | | |
| ▲ | wvbdmp 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah, but it isn’t a war. Just a little operation. It’s perfectly regular, everone does it, ask anyone. | | |
| ▲ | seydor 21 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 145 airplanes , months of planning, weeks of positioning, it's very hard to claim it's not a war |
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| ▲ | fastball 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What is surreal about Trump being in the Situation Room? | | |
| ▲ | neilv 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | As photojournalism, the image is brilliant. Though not entirely candid, that subtext contributes. | | |
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| ▲ | ndgold 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is it true that all war = illegal ? |
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| ▲ | nlitened 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There are literally international legal documents regulating wars. | |
| ▲ | yibg 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Perhaps, but even if that's true it doesn't mean both sides committed an illegal act. Defending against and responding to attacks is not illegal. |
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| ▲ | Bostonian 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Trump Meets the Moment on Iran
The President bombs three nuclear sites to spare the world from an intolerable risk.
Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
June 22, 2025 1:01 am ET President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites on Saturday helped rid the world of a grave nuclear threat and was a large step toward restoring U.S. deterrence. It also creates an opportunity for a more peaceful Middle East, if the nations of the region will seize it. “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Mr. Trump said Saturday night. He made clear Iran brought this on itself. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying ‘death to America,’ ‘death to Israel.’ They’ve been killing our people,” he said, citing 1,000 Americans killed by Iran-supplied roadside bombs and other means. A nuclear Iran was a perilous threat to Israel, the nearby Arab states, and America. Mr. Trump gave Iran every chance to resolve this peacefully. The regime flouted his 60-day deadline to make a deal. Then Israel attacked, destroying much of the nuclear program and achieving air supremacy, and still the President gave Iran another chance to come to terms. The regime wouldn’t even abandon domestic uranium enrichment. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted a bomb more than peace. Military conflict is often unpredictable and the potential for Iranian retaliation can’t be dismissed, no matter how self-destructive it would be. Iran and its Iraqi proxies have threatened U.S. regional bases with missile fire, but Mr. Trump warned that “future attacks will be far greater” if Iran goes down that road. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and brought military assets into the region. If the regime values self-preservation, it will give up its nuclear ambitions and stand down. Much of the press has fixated on the idea that Mr. Trump has now joined or even started a conflict. But Iran has been waging regional and terrorist war for decades. It’s as likely that he has helped end it. Leaving Iran with a hardened nuclear enrichment facility after an Israeli military campaign would have been a recipe for maximum danger, all but asking Iran to sprint to a bomb. At the same time, the Israeli campaign yielded a unrivaled strategic opportunity. Suddenly, Iran’s airspace was uncontested. Its substantial ballistic-missile program was degraded. Several of its proxies had been bludgeoned into silence. Its nuclear program had been reduced to a few key sites, one of which only U.S. weapons could be trusted to penetrate. The opportunity to act and the danger of standing pat may have proved decisive. We would say that they left Mr. Trump little choice, except U.S. Presidents always have a choice, and have been known to kick the can down the road. To his credit, Mr. Trump didn’t, hitting the Fordow enrichment site as well as Natanz and Isfahan. This shows the President wanted to leave no doubt about Iran’s nuclear program and take it all down. Good for him for meeting the moment, despite the doubts from part of his political base. The isolationists were wrong at every step leading up to Saturday, and now they are again predicting another Iraq, if not a road to World War III. Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America, which is his first obligation as President. “History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night. Mr. Trump thanked him and said “we worked as a team.” The Israelis, who proved their strategic value as an ally, would like to complete the mission by destroying what remains of Iran’s missile infrastructure. They deserve a green light, especially as those missiles are threatening U.S. bases. The chatter about TACO—“Trump always chickens out”—will now quiet down, but the more significant reassessment has to do with U.S. foreign policy. The Obamaites of the left, and lately of the right, counseled that the world had to bow to Iranian intimidation. The best we could hope for was a flimsy deal that bribed Iran with billions and left open its path to a bomb. They were wrong. |
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| ▲ | UltraSane 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Iran NEVER needed to enrich uranium if it only wanted nuclear electricity. It could have imported enriched uranium fuel rods for its nuclear reactor. Spending so much on deeply buried enrichment facilities was ALWAYS about getting nuclear weapons. |
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| ▲ | thehappypm an hour ago | parent [-] | | Why did they even want nuclear energy to begin with? A country so wildly fossil fuel rich as Iran has no incentive to produce expensive nuclear energy.. |
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| ▲ | TheAlchemist 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And now what ? If the current regime stays in power, it's pretty much a guarantee that they will pursue nuclear weapons by all means available, in the future. If the US / Israel want to topple the regime... that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan.... Also, isn't it really illegal for a US president to authorize a strike like this without Congress ? |
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| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No, it is not illegal for a US president to authorize strikes like this. American hasn't formally declared war since WWII. Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for decades - and no one, especially no one in the middle east - wants a nuclear armed Iran. America and its partners - and quite often its not-partners - have been working to stop Iranian uranium enrichment for a very long time. As for "guarantees they will pursue nuclear weapons by all means" -- that's the point: they've already been doing so nonstop for decades. In much of the middle east, Iran is detested, and a nuclear armed Iran is deeply feared throughout the region. Iran with nukes means the rest of the middle east will feel compelled to pursue nuclear weapons as well. Again, in vast swaths of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy. | | |
| ▲ | TheAlchemist 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | "they've already been doing so nonstop for decades" - I would think it's not that complicated to make a nuclear bomb today, is it ? Technology has been there for almost 100 years already. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your thinking would be wrong, then. Making nuclear weapons is ridiculously complicated, tedious, and requires access to loads of very specific technology. | | |
| ▲ | TheAlchemist 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I would actually love to read a bit about it. Like, let's say a reasonably sized developed country - say Australia for example, decides that making nukes it's a national priority. How long it would take them ? |
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| ▲ | seydor 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan.... I think that was the plan. Israeli and american and turkish planes are now freely flying over Syria , iraq, (i assume also afghanistan) to conduct attacks. Iran is being set up as theater for long proxy war. The rest of middle east and libya is controlled by turkey & israel which seem to have complementary interests as proxies of the US. At the moment it appears the US/israeli dominance in the whole former Ottoman empire is strong, but inevitably (and quickly) we will see dozens of unconventional wars in the region (what we call terrorism) | |
| ▲ | fiatpandas 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | President can authorize precision strikes and special ops if there’s imminent threat justification. I’m not arguing either way if this strike was justified, but there’s legal pathways for it. The congress rule is about declaring war. | |
| ▲ | ergocoder 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > the US / Israel want to topple the regime... that worked really well in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afganistan.... Then, they wouldn't be organized enough to build a nuclear weapon. That would be a better outcome. | | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | A chaotic broken Iran is going to be a powder keg for the world that keeps erupting unless the US is willing to just glass the entire country. It only looks like a better outcome in the very short term. |
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| ▲ | IAmGraydon 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This information is just a google search away, so I’ll assume you’re willfully ignorant. No it’s not illegal. It can go on for 60 days before requiring authorization by Congress. | |
| ▲ | ActorNightly 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why are people surprised when Trump does things illegally? | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In the American body of law and legislation, strikes such as these aren't illegal. Honestly, we've been doing stuff like this for decades. | |
| ▲ | fastball 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Did it surprise you when Obama did the same? | | |
| ▲ | doofusmcgoo 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nope. Because he didn't do anything illegal. Thanks for calling, goodnight. | | |
| ▲ | jasonboyd 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you sure? He certainly engaged in a lot of military operations in several countries without Congress's approval. He also ramped up drone strikes dramatically. | | |
| ▲ | kelnos 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not to justify what Obama did, but that all fell under the post-9/11 "War on Terror" AUMF. |
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| ▲ | righthand 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Because acting unsurprised means giving Trump a pass. It means normalizing awful things and normalizing hate and hurt. No one actually wants the world where he has no moral limits. |
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| ▲ | disambiguation 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think there are narrow and broad perspectives to apply here. The narrow view is that this is purely a matter of Iran's nuclear program, whereas the broad view is that Iran does not exist in a vacuum. First, a refresher on the state of affairs: * Iran, Russia and China have various military pacts and economic trade deals which bypass western tariffs and sanctions. Some political strategists have characterized these specific countries as an anti-western axis. * Iran supplies Russia with drones and drone manufacturing technology which plays a crucial role in the war on Ukraine. * Iran backs terrorist organizations such as the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The US has recently conducted strikes against the Houthis in Lebanon. Israel conducted their pager attack against Hezbollah. Hamas, we understand, was the catalyst of the current conflict in Gaza. * Iran is on record stating a desire for the destruction of Israel. The West has enemies. Given this context, the west has one of two options: do nothing and let their enemies grow stronger, bolder, and more unified, or proactively disarm and disable the coalition in order to avoid a greater conflict (self-fulfilling prophecies not withstanding). Now let's reexamine today's strike on the nuclear sites: * Israel and the US have squashed Iran's rebel factions. * Israel has seized Tehran's airspace. * Iran is allegedly low on remaining missile supplies. * Iran does not have a nuke. * The US just demolished their uranium refinement sites. At this point you'll ask 2 questions: Q1. Can Iran retaliate? The short answer is: probably not. Iran, who typically strikes through rebels and missiles, is in short supply of both, while also being placed in a headlock (enforced by F-35s) they might be inclined to capitulate sooner than later. Q2. Will anyone defend Iran? And by anyone we mean Russia or China. Well, China has yet to get involved in a global conflict, and has generally had an opportunistic approach to international relationships. I.e Iran is only good for their oil exports, which are still intact (for now). Plus China is on record supporting the 2015 nuclear agreement, i.e they don't want Iran to have nukes either. What about Russia? Well, any other day of the week they might be inclined to assist an ally, but what can they spare? They're not exactly masters of their domain at the moment. In summary, this was a somewhat necessary intervention for the US in both helping an ally in the immediate conflict as well as serving a purpose in the greater geo political context. While this will certainly have unforseeable consequences in global stability, perhaps these small, strategic conflicts are intended to prevent a larger one. |
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| ▲ | seydor 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There is a lot of equating "The West" with israel in this. A LOT of the west is not behind what israel is doing , not even americans are. Iran is a very minor threat to europe and US, and very minor threat in general. There is nothing ideological about this war, nobody seriously believes that. It's 100% power play | | |
| ▲ | tgv an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | The same goes for Iran, of course: I'd wager the majority of them would rather see the current regime go. | |
| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is just putting to action Israel's long term plan of getting US in war with Iran. |
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| ▲ | karmakurtisaani 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Funny how diplomacy is not an option for you. |
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| ▲ | cedws 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So is that the end of Iran’s nuclear programme, or is there more to it? |
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| ▲ | giantg2 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They're committed. They'll rebuild. Just as Stuxnet just delayed things. | | | |
| ▲ | hotmeals 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Terminator Skynet rules, they just delayed it. | |
| ▲ | swagasaurus-rex 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is just another square in my world war three bingo board. Sits pretty close to breaking the nuclear taboo square. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | A country doesn't acquire nukes to use them. They acquire them to freeze specific layers of conflict. Actually using them among peers invites annihilation. | | |
| ▲ | mensetmanusman 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Statistics says even if it’s true, unintended use probability sky rockets risking nuclear winter. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | It turns out (and I didn't realize this until I looked back into it just a few years ago) that the 70s/80s concept of nuclear winter is discredited and believed not to be something that would arise from a global thermonuclear holocaust. | | |
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| ▲ | swagasaurus-rex 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Annihilation, that would make a good square on the bingo board |
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| ▲ | hiddencost 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | https://popular.info/p/what-will-happen-if-the-united-states This is the end of any hope. Iran will now do everything in its power to get one. And it has all the skills it needs. Refinement keeps getting easier. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | They've been doing anything in their power to get nuclear weapons for decades! This isn't some new trend that just occurred to them last week. |
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| ▲ | koonsolo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is the "Why don't you use diplomacy?" administration, right? So why didn't the great negotiator use diplomacy? |
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| ▲ | ujkhsjkdhf234 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Before the election, I had conservatives telling me that Trump is anti-war and the world will be more stable under him. The war in Ukraine he promised to end is still ongoing, Gaza is still being bombed to nothing, and now US is kicking off war against Iran. I don't understand how you all keep falling for it. |
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| ▲ | duxup 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is there an end to this? The US actually ends Iran's nuclear program, they quit trying and obey ... because we bombed them? Most of the recent middle east history doesn't seem to ever end as much as just go through a continuous cycle of violence creating more of what the folks condoning violence claim they're preventing. |
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| ▲ | twelve40 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | fwiw they do seem to have wiped out a bunch of opponents recently, some weakened to the point of giving up, others wiped out entirely. ever since the so-called "arab spring" the trend has been pretty steady. | | |
| ▲ | siltcakes 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | What do you think all of the children of parents murdered by Israel will do? There will be much stronger resistance in the future. | | |
| ▲ | twelve40 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I wonder that too, with Gaza with the current approach the only endgame seems to be to either just kill everyone or to displace every single person somewhere else, but if those children continue to have living conditions of animals, their resistance will be of no consequence. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but i think this is not inaccurate unfortunately. | | |
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| ▲ | cryptozeus 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iraq completely shut down post war so yeh its possible | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We fought a war against Iraq, conducted no fly zone operations over them for 12 years, fought another war, occupied them for 9 years, left and came back less than 3 years later for another 7 year long military operation against the terrorist group that filled the power vacuum. We still have about 2500 troops stationed in Iraq. | | |
| ▲ | FuckButtons 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | We still have 55k in Japan and 24k in Korea, what exactly is your point? 2500 troops for a military the size of the US is a rounding error. | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thank you for the additional examples of things not simply shutting down after a quick conflict. Lasting peace requires decades of military involvement. That is my point. |
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| ▲ | enlightenedfool 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | All that is supported by the American public buying defense stocks. Just new war strategies when party in power changes. |
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| ▲ | baobun 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's a completely different story. The roots and branches of Iran and its current leadership go deeper and wider on a different level. Saddam had nothing in comparison. Hamas would be a cakewalk in comparison and that's apparently still going. Hard to see this being achievable over a just a couple of years if at all. | |
| ▲ | vFunct 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Iraq wasn't a populist movement. Iran is. |
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| ▲ | reaperducer 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just yesterday I was wondering when the last time was that the Middle East had a period of peace. I know it hasn't been in my lifetime. | | |
| ▲ | jordanb 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not since the Ottomans picked the wrong side in WWI. | | |
| ▲ | vdupras 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | One question I have on my mind is: what side will they pick in WWIII? |
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| ▲ | pjc50 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Shortly before the assassination of Rabin? | |
| ▲ | greenavocado 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It was getting pretty quiet leading up to the moment Assad was deposed. | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Assad was deposed more than a year after the start of the current Israel/Gaza flare up, which has included conflict in Lebanon and Yemen. He was also deposed nearly 14 years into the Syrian Civil War. |
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| ▲ | jordanb 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. That was the assessment of Trump's own government back in March, according to testimony of his national security advisor under oath before congress. We knew about these sites because they have been under IAEA supervision for many years. The smart thing for Iran to do at this point is do what Israel did: not submit to any arms control and develop their own weapons in secret. Clearly this is the only way to be safe when people in Tel Aviv and Washington are openly discussing the "Libya solution." | | |
| ▲ | dralley 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is grammar-hacking and misleading. According to the IAEA, Iran has around 400kg of 60% enriched Uranium. Nobody disputes this. There is zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 5% for civilian purposes, and zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 20% for non-bomb purposes (naval ship reactors typically use higher enrichment to avoid refueling and increase power density). That's enough Uranium to build around 10 bombs if fully enriched. They've done work on designing the actual bomb itself, too, and there's very little dispute about that either. They have a nuclear weapons program. What Iran hasn't done, or there's no evidence of them having done, is actually start putting one together. But many of the prerequisites to do so are in place, though people dispute exactly how long it would take them to pull it off once they decided to do so. | | |
| ▲ | throwworhtthrow 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Gaining the knowledge to build a nuclear weapon is not the same thing as assembling one. Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, March 2025: "the IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program." [1] Please explain how "Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program" is grammar hacking the above quote. [1] https://youtu.be/nOhOqjx1y18?t=701 | | |
| ▲ | dralley 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you're actively doing the research and design required to build a nuclear weapon, and you're enriching uranium for the purpose of building a nuclear weapon, you have a nuclear weapons program. Whether you're actually physically assembling one immediately or not. You wouldn't argue that the Manhattan Project wasn't a "real" nuclear weapons program until they started physically building the prototype. |
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| ▲ | TiredOfLife 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They also have the delivery mechanism. A huge ballistic missile program. | |
| ▲ | csomar 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think his point is: you knew about this 60% because we have visibility into their plants. But if we didn't, we probably have less of an idea of what is going on there. | |
| ▲ | einpoklum 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > There is zero reason to ever enrich beyond around 5% for civilian purposes, False. https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/69513/7643 |
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| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is grossly incorrect: Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment for decades - and the west (and even the not-west) has been working to counter it the whole time. Iran is considered a bellicose enemy in much of the middle east. A nuclear-armed Iran would quickly lead to the rest of the middle east pursing their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran. A nuclear armed Iran leads to rapid nuclear proliferation throughout the middle east. | |
| ▲ | noufalibrahim 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Indeed. I remember an old interview of Robert Fisk where in which his analysis was that the only way to stay safe from attacks like this was to have a nuclear weapon. I can't think of any other way. Their rhetoric is needlessly belligerent but it doesn't seem like there's anything they can do to guarantee their own safety. |
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| ▲ | greenavocado 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Considering the fact that many US congressmen openly fly the flag of Israel in and around their congressional offices and openly proclaim absolute commitment to this foreign entity, there is no end in sight to the direct interference in US politics and subsequent military intervention and aid supporting these people while our country is sucked dry and our soldiers are ordered to die fighting in their wars. |
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| ▲ | vaughands 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Seriously, what is the benefit to the US here? I can't understand how this benefits the country at all. |
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| ▲ | kumarvvr 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If Iran has nukes, then a nuke race will start in the middle East, especially with Saudis, who will want their own nukes. Iran getting nukes is the spark that will start a lot of chain reactions. And islamic populations are radicalized enough that the possibility of a nuke on Israel increases dramatically. | | |
| ▲ | selcuka 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > If Iran has nukes, then a nuke race will start in the middle East A fair concern, but it is interesting that although "estimates of Israel's stockpile range between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads" [1], we are not concerned about those warheads as much as we do about the ones Iran might have. Should US bomb Israeli nuclear plants? No. Should they have bombed the Iranian ones? Why? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel | | |
| ▲ | yonisto 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Because in Israel they don't chant "death to Iran" for the past 46 year. Amazingly none of Israel immediate neighbors, whom she has peace deals with, felt the need to obtain Nuclear weapons (Jordan/Egypt). Israel is 1500km from Iran, people in Israel don't care about Iran they only think about Iran in the context of the weekly threats to destroy Ireal for the past 46 years. Iran on the other hand has a fucked up regime. That's the difference. | | |
| ▲ | heavyset_go 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Death to Arabs is an anti-Arab slogan originating in Israel. It is often used during protests and civil disturbances across Israel, the West Bank, and to a lesser extent, the Gaza Strip. Depending on the person's temperament, it may specifically be an expression of anti-Palestinianism or otherwise a broader expression anti-Arab sentiment, which includes non-Palestinian Arabs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Arabs | |
| ▲ | all_factz 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Have you been to Israel? I have cousins there. When I was 14 and visited, my 19 year old cousin told me we need to kill all the Arabs because “if we exile them, they will just come back.” Do you really think (a large segment of) Israelis are less crazy than (a large segment of) Iranians? | |
| ▲ | vFunct 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Israel has always threatened its neighbors. Remember, it was born as a group of European Jews that attacked Palestine to conquer their land, with arms provided to them by Europe. It will always exist under a state of war. We have to let Israel die off and change our alliances. An alliance with Iran would be much more beneficial to America than an alliance with Israel. |
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| ▲ | partiallypro 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We didn't want Israel to have nukes either, we tried to stop them and failed. We wouldn't bomb Israel's nukes because they -already- have them, and they have grown in a semi-reliable regional ally since then. We are trying to stop Iran from having them at all to prevent them from being essentially off-limits to retaliation (note Iran is the #1 state sponsor of terrorism / people's fears of supporting Ukraine given Russia keeps threatening nuclear action) and kicking off a regional nuclear arms race. | |
| ▲ | buzzerbetrayed 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Maybe it has something to do with Israel being an ally and Iran sponsoring terrorism all over the region |
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| ▲ | nashashmi 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Islamic populations? | | |
| ▲ | kumarvvr 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Most of Islamic republics are fiefdoms, kingdoms and dictatorships. Most of the populations are radicalized, and have very limited freedom of speech and right to protest. | | |
| ▲ | Ar-Curunir 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Have you lived in any of these Islamic countries? | | |
| ▲ | kumarvvr 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Is that a pre-condition to know about countries, leaderships and general public? I have not lived in the US, and I know a lot about the US national character. | | |
| ▲ | Ar-Curunir 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, I would say that making sweeping statements about a populace does require actual first-hand experience with said populace. |
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| ▲ | booleandilemma 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You just have to read a wikipedia article on them. No need to live there. |
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| ▲ | danenania 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think this attack makes it more likely they’ll get nukes, not less. They moved all their enriched uranium already, and now they know that there’s no longer any point in diplomacy. The next facilities they build will be a few times deeper, and I have no doubt we’ll soon be hearing that ground troops are the only way to stop them. | | |
| ▲ | dlubarov 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They had already crossed the line into nuclear tech that's specifically for weapons, i.e. with a 400kg stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%. Unless we accept explanations like "scientific curiosity", they were already somewhere in the process of building nuclear weapons, even if success wasn't immanent. I don't know how long these operations will set them back, but if the Iranian regime won't willingly refrain from nuclear weapons work, isn't a delay better than nothing? | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 60% enrichment is not weapons grade. Weapons grade is 80%. High enrichment is used in certain reactor designs, such as naval reactors. There are a lot of reasons to be enriching uranium besides building nuclear weapons. Considering the US reneged on its deal to drop sanctions in exchange for Iran to not enrich uranium, it is pretty obviously useful as a bargaining chip, in the negotiations. The US intelligence community assessed that Iran has not been working on a bomb since the program was shut down in 2003. They didn't want a nuke, they wanted an end to sanctions. They further wanted to avoid provoking exactly this sort of conflict. This did not delay them getting nuclear weapons, it will make them get nuclear weapons. | | |
| ▲ | dlubarov 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | To quote an ISIS report, "Iran has no civilian use or justification for its production of 60 percent enriched uranium, particularly at the level of hundreds of kilograms". In theory it could be for naval propulsion, but experts (including IAEA inspectors) seem unconvinced. | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | They had a very obvious use for it: trade it to the US in exchange for sanctions relief. |
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| ▲ | danenania 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They “could have” had nuclear weapons for a long time if they’d wanted to, yes, but they didn’t get them. They signed the NPT, allowed inspections, and their ruler issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons. Why’d they do all that if their goal all along was to get a nuclear weapon? They could have just done it. These attacks make it clear that they would have been better off if they had gotten them, so it seems reasonable to assume this will be their new policy. What other strategic choice have they been left with? | | |
| ▲ | dlubarov 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Just to clarify, is your position that Iran was never working toward nuclear weapons, or just not until recently? I think enriching uranium to 60% is pretty clear evidence of their intent, even though it's just one component of an eventual weapon. Being an NPT signatory could be evidence of Iran not working toward nuclear weapons, if they were compliant. But they have violated their NPT obligations on some occasions, with major violations recently. | | |
| ▲ | danenania 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think they wanted to be seen as credibly close as a deterrent and bargaining chip in negotiations, but they had no intention of going all the way unless attacked. Now they likely do intend to get them asap if they’re able to. |
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| ▲ | mupuff1234 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Those can be bombed right at the beginning. Israel will probably try to establish a similar status que as in Lebanon right now - "if you make a move we immediately take it out". And the development of a nuclear sites leaves a significant intelligence trail, not sure it can be hidden. (Of course they can always be gifted a bomb, but that's a very different story) | | |
| ▲ | danenania 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah I’m sure it will be a huge success with no unforeseen consequences whatsoever. Since that’s how these things have been going over the last thirty years. | | |
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| ▲ | jenny91 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Almost a kind of domino theory, if you will? | |
| ▲ | vFunct 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And that's something we will have to accept, that Islamic populations will always have nukes. How do you plan to handle a world with Islamic populations having nukes? Because that's something you will have to plan for. You have no choice. They will not let you not let them have nukes. They will make sure they will have nukes. That's just given. |
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| ▲ | proc0 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US is the leader of the liberal empire which depends on the middle east allowing trade. Iran is standing in the way of this and wants to push back the empire's control away from the middle east... but they have their own plans to establish another empire of their own. I know "empire" is maybe an outdated term but I'm just illustrating there are bigger incentives than at the national level. Ironically it is conservative nationalists (who are hated by the Left) that want the empire to shrink and for the US to pull back from this leadership position. The risk here is it could also destabilize the entire world, but that's a different matter. In short, this move is an attempt to strengthen the status quo that began after WW2.If the status quo is maintained it directly benefits the US. | | |
| ▲ | Workaccount2 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | People who were born into, grew up in, and live the current western bubble take it for granted and genuinely believe it is something natural rather than carefully built and expensively maintained - for extraordinary benefit. | | |
| ▲ | frollogaston 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't take it for granted, but Israel and these trillion-dollar Mid East wars don't seem to help it. China and Russia must be very pleased with the US being so distracted for the past 50 years while they established economic control even in the Mid East. | |
| ▲ | tombh 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If I had only one wish, it would be to burst this bubble. | |
| ▲ | komali2 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > for extraordinary benefit. I'm seeing a lot of death and the payoff is... Cheap gas prices? I can't imagine what. But the replies to this laying out all the benefits of blood soaked American hegemony I'm sure will be great for a laugh. | | |
| ▲ | MegaButts 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The petrodollar, which largely depends on the US having significant influence over global oil supply, is arguably the main reason why the USD is the global reserve currency and an enormous reason why the US is as wealthy as it is. | | |
| ▲ | dralley 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | The petrodollar is severely overrated by people who claim it's the cause for every foreign policy decision they disagree with. USD is attractive because the US government is stable and US companies are attractive investments, due to a historical track record of competence and rule of law adherence - unlike, say, Saudi currency, or Russian currency, or Chinese currency. The US government doesn't do a lot of currency manipulation relative to those other countries either. Of course, that historical record is being shat upon currently, and the importance of petroleum is on a downward trajectory from here on. |
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| ▲ | frollogaston 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We aren't even really getting cheap gas prices out of this. Iran is one of the largest oil producers, and we won't allow trade with them, so instead we've built a relationship with other dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, who know we have no other choice. But our actions are also straining that. |
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| ▲ | guelo 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is the opposite of how I see it. This move is a complete repudiation of the post-ww2 order that emphasized the system of international laws and treaties developed by the UN. For the US to blindly follow Israel into a war with a sovereign country without even taking it to the UN or Congress is preposterous and signals the end of the post-ww2 and American domestic order. Both the UN Charter and the US Constitution are trashed and we won't recover from it in our life times. There's a reason Bush W sent Colin Powell to the UN, we still paid lip service to the rule of law 20 years ago. We don't even pretend anymore. We are trashing our laws and institution all at the behest of some a tiny racist religious extremist country. | | |
| ▲ | lunar-whitey 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don’t envy the position of American diplomats the next time they are asked to negotiate an off-ramp from hostilities while military options are simultaneously being considered. Intentional or not, the diplomatic posture leading up to this point reads like diversion. | |
| ▲ | jaybrendansmith 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is also how I see it. This child-man has just blown 80 years of careful control and credibility. Who allowed this to happen? A bunch of feckless children, who should never have been allowed to rule. Way to go, people. It all goes downhill from here. | |
| ▲ | proc0 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "the system of international laws and treaties" are only effective to the extent that someone is going to enforce it, and that someone is the US and its allies. So ultimately it's military power that matters. The status quo is only maintained because the US has military bases all over the world. If we retreat from the world and let Iran do whatever it wants (which is more influence and an Islamic empire), the the world order crumbles and that has an even more increased chance of WW3, as multiple nations will fight over the void left behind by the US. Part of the reason things are unfolding this way is because the US rose to world power with the invention of the nuclear bomb.... which automatically means that toppling the US might mean nuclear war, which spells doom for the entire world. Not sure I would call that luck, but that is why the world cannot change to a new world order easily without existential risk. And as the "world police" the US doesn't want non-allies to get the bomb for this reason (something that Trump has been saying for years, which proves he is just maintaining status quo). | |
| ▲ | nocoiner 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I hate how much I agree with this assessment. | |
| ▲ | cloverich 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You realize we (us) are a large, religious, racist country? Generally speaking, anti muslim, anti Iran sentiment is EXTREMELY high in the parts of the US that voted for Trump, at least based on my personal network. |
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| ▲ | macintux 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trump has undermined the status quo at every opportunity. He feels the US hasn’t been compensated for its efforts. | |
| ▲ | hiddencost 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nonsense. The history of the US is one of regime change wars and genocide. |
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| ▲ | arandomusername 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It doesn't. It's all because Israel has extreme influence over US politicians. | |
| ▲ | jandrewrogers 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Keeping the Arab world from building their own nuclear weapons has long been contingent on Iran not having a nuclear weapons program. It only benefits the US to the extent it prevents the situation where half the countries in the Middle East having nuclear weapons. | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Good lord, it benefits far more than just America if the broader middle east doesn't enter into a rapid nuclear weapons proliferation stage. Iran is considered to be a very serious enemy throughout much of the middle east. A nuclear armed Iran is a very bad idea. |
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| ▲ | slv77 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This paper from 1999 provides some context about the US and Israel relationship in the context of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The third temple's holy of holies : Israel's nuclear weapons https://dp.la/item/525bc46d51878c5e285d9069a80246d0 | |
| ▲ | Jtsummers 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It benefits the MIC, this is unlikely to be the end of this conflict. | |
| ▲ | twelve40 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | the dude needs a PR win of some kind. I guess he gave up on the Nobel prize and decided to try something else. Aside from that, could really be a chance to end the nukes there and try to topple the regime, who knows what's going to happen, but time-wise now is the best opportunity. | |
| ▲ | Schnitz 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The world is better off if a theocracy whose leadership believes in jihad doesn’t have nukes. | | | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran is the foremost sponsor of terrorism. They cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. No country that doesn't have a nuclear weapons program enriches uranium to 60%. Iran must be forced to come to a diplomatic negotiation. | | |
| ▲ | shihab 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I understand Iran is a headache to Israel, but did it have to be an enemy of USA? Isn't Iran's ambition, and its proxies, are all regional in nature? Have they ever attempted to harm an american living in America? Israel has led an amazingly succesful campaign in presenting their problems (often arising out of their territorial ambitions) as a problem for the entire west. | | |
| ▲ | Workaccount2 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Letting a death cult of religious zealots have nukes is an awful idea for the entire world. | | |
| ▲ | wudangmonk 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I agree which is why we need to get all these evangelical nuts actively trying to destroy the world so that Jesus come back out of power. No more death cults!. | |
| ▲ | ndiddy 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Agreed, I also support the denuclearization of Israel. | | | |
| ▲ | goatlover 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Religious zealots close to power also exist in Israel and the US. | | |
| ▲ | const_cast 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Israel definitely, but the US? Ehhh we have religious zealots but they're very tame as compared to zealots elsewhere. Not a lot of beheadings or executions going on here. |
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| ▲ | Ar-Curunir 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So, Israel then? |
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| ▲ | nailer 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran has killed a bunch of Americans, but typically not inside America. Here’s a list, make of that what you want: https://x.com/chalavyishmael/status/1936107345093996775?s=46 | |
| ▲ | andsoitis 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US has many economic and strategic interests in the Middle East. The US is leaving many moments for Iran to come to the table to stop building towards nuclear power. | |
| ▲ | infamouscow 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Khamenei is largely popular, even though the youth of Iran largely doesn't support the regime at a whole. The root problem is the military is controlled by various factions of lunatics that want to see the end of Israel. It's these people ought to be mercilessly killed and I have no qualms once so ever advocating for brutal violence and (preferably) murder against them. |
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| ▲ | jjk166 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Netherlands and Germany both produce highly enriched uranium despite not having nuclear weapons programs. 60% enrichment is insufficient for use in nuclear weapons. Iran's enriched uranium is its main bargaining chip in the diplomatic negotiations that the US walked away from. Iran was assessed by the US intelligence community to not be developing nuclear weapons. | |
| ▲ | logankeenan 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorist groups. The key word being “state”. There are many well known terrorist groups that are not sponsored by Iran. | |
| ▲ | standardUser 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran was willing to "come to a diplomatic negotiation" before Israel pre-emptively and unilaterally attacked. In fact, Iran and the US had found a diplomatic solution before Trump tore it up and promised to get a better deal (and then repeatedly failed to do so). | |
| ▲ | Buttons840 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Iran is the foremost sponsor of terrorism. How much does Iran spend sponsoring terrorism? | |
| ▲ | dakiol 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And yet the only country in the history of humankind that has dropped not one but two nuclear bombs: the usa. So tired of american bullshit. | |
| ▲ | fatbird 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Iran did come to a diplomatic solution: the JCPOA [0]. Unfortunately, it was Obama who did it, so Trump tore it up in his first term. Why would Iran believe that any diplomatic outcome is meaningful? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac... | |
| ▲ | vFunct 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why must we stop Iran's terrorism? Their terrorism is directed at Israel, not America. We can in fact just as easily support Iran's attacks against Israel. No reason to pick either side. Right now the American people are coming to the consensus that Israel are the bad guys. Everybody under 50 already recognizes that, purely based on the thousands of Palestinian toddlers they see on Instagram that Israel kills and injures (the popular post today on Instagram is of a toddler with his legs severed). And the people over 50 will eventually die off, causing Israel's base of support to disappear. There is no hope of Israel's permanent existence. We should remove our support for Israel immediately and prepare for the long term. | | |
| ▲ | cloverich 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | You see the Gaza child missing limbs. They see the Israeli civilian massacred by Hamas. The quantity is far less relevant than the quality of Instagrams (and any other) algorithm. What is the realistic path to Israels demise exactly? This country, which literally JUST voted in Trump knowing full well he would approve this approach, is going to change course that much? I'll believe it when Texas finally goes blue, such ive been hearing about for 11 election cycles now. | | |
| ▲ | afroboy 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You literally comparing the genocide happening to what rebels did? |
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| ▲ | tehjoker 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | they are trying to cut off chinas oil, settle a score, and defend "greater israel" they are also punishing iran for selling oil in their national currency imperialism run amok | | |
| ▲ | thinkcontext 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | If they wanted to disrupt China's oil wouldn't they have hit the main export terminal on Kharg Island? More generally, you don't think its likely that, regardless of what you think of Israel, their main motivation is they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? | | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > If they wanted to disrupt China's oil wouldn't they have hit the main export terminal on Kharg Island? They aren't ready to directly start that war. They are trying to cut off the alliances first. Iran is a much smaller country (90M vs over a billion) with a lot of oil. Conveniently, Iran is already so dehumanized many Americans don't even recognize their rights to sovereignty. > their main motivation is they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? No. They have been trying to attack Iran since the revolution. It's similar to how Cuba embarrassed America and was never forgiven. If Iran wanted a weapon they'd have one. However, these attacks may force Iran to get one because countries with nuclear weapons appear to actually have sovereignty. Iran of course retains the possibility of making one, hoping that will have the same effect, but it appears that doesn't do it. |
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| ▲ | scythe 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If this was about the benefit to the United States, then we would have had months of public buildup and debate like we did with the war in Iraq. It is hardly an example of a good decision, but history shows that it was at least a popular one; the majority of poll respondents and of legislators were both in favor of the initial invasion of Iraq. I was only eleven at the time, but I remember most moderate Democrats and independents who I knew (including, particularly, my seventh-grade history teacher, who was no fan of Bush) were in favor of the war. Contrast that to the situation today, when polls show Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to involvement [1] and even some prominent Republican legislators (Gaetz, IIRC) were against the war. This is the Trump show: it's motivated by his ego and hopium. He's more erratic than ever. Historically, American presidents almost never started a major war without popular support (Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were all popular when they started, and I think Libya and Kosovo were too). I can't even think of a case where the country was dragged into a war that was opposed 60% to 16% in favor. I would be very interested to hear if there ever was one. 1: https://www.axios.com/2025/06/19/israel-iran-war-americans-p... | |
| ▲ | FridayoLeary 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oil for starters. Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east. By proxy they are participating in every conflict. A nuclear iran would be completely intolerable, never mind that their regime might just be lunatic enough to use them. Add that war is bad for the whole world. So the us benefits that it protects her economic (and strategic) interests in the ME, which are real and extremely important, at the low cost of a limited air campaign. There are further moral arguments, but i'm answering your question in the most direct way. | | |
| ▲ | twixfel an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Israel is the principal destabilising element in the Middle East. It cannot even be argued at this point. It's them, the Israelis. | |
| ▲ | shihab 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east Says Israel, the nation who tore up every single international laws, directly led campaign against UN and ICC, and whose right-wing (ones in power now) have been dreaming about a Greater Israel that threatens territorial integrity of like 10 different ME countries. | |
| ▲ | komali2 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's seeming more and more like Israel, which propped up Hamas for example, is the principal destabilizing element in the region, and therefore really it's America, which spearheaded the original overthrow of Iranian democracy, alongside all its other middle eastern meddling for the last fifty years. | |
| ▲ | 34679 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Oil If we want their oil, we can buy it like reasonable people do. What you're referring to is armed robbery. >Iran is the principle destabilising element in the middle east Is this a joke? The country that has not started any wars in its 300 year existence is not the "destabilizing element". That would be the country that has attacked Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran this year alone. | | |
| ▲ | amluto 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a strange comparison. Iran funds the Houthis, for example, who commit plenty of acts of war. And if you’re talking about starting wars, it’s worth noting that the present war in Gaza was started by Hamas. (I’m making no statement about whether the actions of either side or justified — I’m just pointing out that, in the present shooting war, the first shots were fired by Hamas, not Israel.) | | |
| ▲ | 34679 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | You ignore decades of aggression and occupation in Gaza, along with the 4 other countries Israel has decided to launch wars against this year. "But Hamas" is not a convincing argument. |
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| ▲ | FridayoLeary 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You misunderstood me. I was talking about oil from the other gulf states. About 25 percent of the global oil supply goes through the straight of Hormuz. If iran were to disrupt that it would be disastrous for obvious reasons. It's logical for the West to work to prevent that from being a possibility. Iran/persia is far older then 300 years old. But again you somehow missed the point. I was talking about the current 40 year old regime, which while not having directly started any wars, have since the beginning declared their intentions to do so against America and Israel. Really you are being deliberately obtuse. | | |
| ▲ | 34679 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >I was talking about the current 40 year old regime Oh, and how did it come to power? |
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| ▲ | l33tbro 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A superpower being beholden to Netanyahu's impulses beggars belief. Israel, their client state, acts out in aggression against its neighbour against US advice. The US bails them out and takes the fallout now. Astounding. |
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| ▲ | wnevets 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I was told trump was the peace president. |
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| ▲ | codedokode 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | He promised to end a war but instead started another one. | | |
| ▲ | mensetmanusman 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | We will know shortly whether bombing 700 spinning motors that we’re building death spheres is an act of war… | | |
| ▲ | jjk166 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well if someone did it to our enrichment plants, it would be an act of war. |
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| ▲ | codedokode 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I am a little confused. Is bombing a sovereign country under far-fetched excuse considered ok or not today? |
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| ▲ | grugagag 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | For the world I want to live in it is not. Seems surreal but maybe it’s not that world anymore, and I fear it will get worse. | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There is nothing far-fetched about countering Iran's nuclear ambitions: they have been actively and blatantly pursuing it for decades. A nuclear armed Iran would quickly lead much of the middle east to pursue their own nuclear weapons programs to counter Iran: in that part of the world, Iran is considered a very serious enemy. | |
| ▲ | lwansbrough 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | What is far fetched about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? | | |
| ▲ | Ekaros 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Why not take moral upper hand and first destroy all of your own nuclear weapons? | |
| ▲ | sealeck 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Lack of nuclear weapon. | | |
| ▲ | lwansbrough 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | You can’t prevent them from developing a nuclear weapon if you wait until they have it. They were enriching uranium near weapons-grade levels. What more evidence do you need without seeing an actual assembled nuclear weapon? | | |
| ▲ | sealeck 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean do you think the Iranian government is more incentivised to build a nuclear weapon before or after?? | | |
| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They've been pursuing nuclear weapons for decades, and bit by bit getting closer. A nuclear armed Iran would result in the rest of the middle east - most of which considers Iran a serious enemy - to pursue their own nuclear weapons program. | |
| ▲ | cbg0 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The goal was to stop their progress, not reduce/increase incentives. |
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| ▲ | billfor 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's OK. |
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| ▲ | 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | MangoToupe 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| So much for humanity learning from its mistakes.... |
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| ▲ | arp242 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "But this time it's different!" IMHO the Israeli policy of punching everyone so hard they're reeling is a massive mistake for Israel in the long term. It works great short-term, but 50 years? 100 years? Who knows what the world will look like then, and being surrounded by enemies is not going to work well when you no longer have your fancy US-backed missile shields and whatnot. The best long-term bet is for normalised relationship with its neighbours, and every time something like this happens that gets set back 20 years at least. Then again, they had already given up on that with how it treated the Palestinians both in Gaza and West-Bank... This doesn't mean military action is never an option under any circumstances, but no nation can perpetuate hostilities forever. Whether it's 50, 100, or 200 years: this has a massive risk of coming back to bite Israel hard. | | |
| ▲ | sorcerer-mar 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah IMO the last 2 years (and especially 5 hours) have pretty much permanently shattered Israel's privileged child status in the US. Their actions in Gaza have fractured leftwing support, and dragging the US into this war have fractured rightwing support. Hope they're building other friendships in the region, I don't see the unquestioning US patronage lasting much longer. | | |
| ▲ | Stevvo 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Would be nice if that were the reality, but it couldn't be further from it. US support for Israeli is stronger than it ever has been. | | |
| ▲ | ch33zer 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Among the political class, which is the only group that matters now that senators don't really answer to voters any more |
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| ▲ | moogly 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Their actions in Gaza have fractured leftwing support, Chuck Schumer still supports killing and maiming toddlers though. |
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| ▲ | PeterHolzwarth 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Much of humanity has learned, and so aggressively pursues anti-proliferation. America, the west, and many countries beyond the west, have been working to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions for decades. Iran is detested in much of the middle east. If they get nukes, the rest of the middle east will feel compelled to quickly pursue their own nuclear weapons programs. | |
| ▲ | FuckButtons 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trump doesn’t seem like the kind of person to learn from his, or anyone else's mistakes. | |
| ▲ | hagbard_c 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That remains to be seen and, in another universe, could have been said about someone not keeping a nation from creating nuclear weaponry which it subsequently used against its opponents. |
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| ▲ | Kye 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They didn't finish manufacturing consent yet. Novice mistake. |
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| ▲ | yongjik 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's Trump. He could bomb LA and 30% of Americans will cheer for it. I'm not sure consent matters. Hopefully the ensuing economic meltdown will sour enough Americans before too many people are killed, but who knows. | | |
| ▲ | ExaltedPunt 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | A large portion of Trump's base are very unhappy about bombing Iran and are very critical of any comments that are pro-war in general. I see it in a lot of comments sections and social media message to the effect of "I voted for Trump, and I didn't vote for this (war in Iran)". Generally, Any prominent pro-Israel republican if they post anything pro-war will have hundreds of negative replies. It is incredibly depressing to see people constantly falling into the trap that their political opposition are dumb / brainwashed. |
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| ▲ | cempaka 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Either they believe it is no longer necessary, or they are facing some other set of constraints that is making it less feasible. | | |
| ▲ | MangoToupe 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | I've got to imagine the israel lobby is putting an enormous amount of pressure on DC to attack. |
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| ▲ | 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | deepsquirrelnet 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE” about to become the new “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED”? |
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| ▲ | giantg2 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Well, CSOCs are likely to get busy this week. |
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| ▲ | typeofhuman 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Weird how this is front page but a post for the wiki page of the Northrop B-2 Spirit gets flagged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44341958 Here's the interesting wiki:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit |
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| ▲ | pvg 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | A discussion of a major world event makes a lot more sense than a discussion of something tangentially related to a major world event. People sensibly flag the tangential stuff as effective dupes - it wouldn't really make sense to have a front page discussion about the event as well as a front page discussion about a plane. | | |
| ▲ | typeofhuman an hour ago | parent [-] | | The post about the stealth bomber doesn't have to be front page. I just disagree it should be flagged. |
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| ▲ | xnx 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Did I miss the part where Congress declared war or is that passe? |
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| ▲ | oceansky 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Even Vietnam wasn't formally declared as a war. Last formal declaration was WWII. | | |
| ▲ | soraminazuki 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | As I understand it, congress still authorized the use of force. Nowadays, the president effectively bypasses congress using the 2 decades old authorization for the use of force against the overly broad threat of "terror." |
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| ▲ | wmf 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not a war, it's a limited engagement or whatever. | | | |
| ▲ | goodluckchuck 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A declaration of war is an invitation for the other side to attack. Rather than being a restraint against war, empowering Congress to declare war allows them to force a potentially unwilling president into war. |
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| ▲ | hearsathought 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Imagine if Putin got Trump to bomb ukraine for him. Imagine if Xi got Trump to bomb Taiwan for him. There would be a crisis in this country as the media would be attacking trump for being a stooge to a foreign power. How is it possible that a foreign leader, Netanyahu ( who has lied in the past to get us to attack iraq ), can get Trump to bomb Iran and nobody, especially in the media, bats an eye. The media is focused on the bombing, but shouldn't the focus be on foreign control over much of the US government? After years of soul searching over the iraq fiasco and the lies can we still be in this position again? |
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| ▲ | jmyeet 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | I sympathize with people thinking Israel is wagging the dog but I don't think it's true. Israel exists in the way that it does and does what it does because we allow it to. It is a toolf our imperial interests, not the other way around. To argue otherwise absolves us of our responsibility and can often descend into antisemitism (which I oppose). We have described Israel as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" in a region we want to destabilize becuase it has resources that are important to us. Oh and this is uniparty too. Don't kid yourselves if you think things would be different if the Democrats were in power. It would not. There is universal agreement on US foreign policy across both parties. The events in Gaza began under a Democratic president who did absolutely nothing to rein Israel in where he could've ended it with a phone call. There is no opposition to what Israel is doing. Even now, Democratic leaders in Congress aren't complaining about what the president is doing and has done. They're complaining that they weren't consulted. And not to oppose it but to have the opportunity to express their support. And yes, the media is absolutely complicit in what's going on too. |
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| ▲ | aaron695 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The bunker busters will not have worked on Fordow. (It will be the first time a GBU-57A/B has been used in war, which is interesting) They needed troops on the ground. Israel was going to do this. It's possible they have just collapsed the entrances. Trumps comments - https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump You have a loop, @Osint613 reposted Trump as "Fordow is gone" which Trump reposted. Neither of them have any idea. (Natanz, Isfahan were already hit and damaged by Israel, the US didn't bother to bunker bust them, it was Tomahawks from subs ) 3D model of Fordow - https://x.com/TheIntelLab/status/1398716540485308417 You need a tactical nuke to destroy Fordow, but the USA considers tactical the same as strategic, so it would be very unlikely. Russia could, since they put tactical in a different category. |
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| ▲ | lunar-whitey 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Expert opinions seem to differ on this. We will know once enough satellite and signal intelligence data has been analyzed for US leadership to ascertain whether further strikes may be required. | |
| ▲ | Havoc 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Saw reports that natanz did get 2x too |
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| ▲ | senectus1 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| sigh this is Iraq all over again. watch as the US is now dragged into 10-20 years of war in the middle east again. |
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| ▲ | anonu 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A consequential night for Israel: peace for many decades to come. I worry, however, that peace through bombing is not a permanent solution. Peace comes through diplomacy. Ideology does not die in the rubble. |
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| ▲ | blobbers 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is it safe to blow up a nuclear plant? Doesn't that cause bad things to spread? |
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| ▲ | dankobgd 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Americans only care about stealing oil and gas | |
| ▲ | coliveira 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, but who said that Trump cares about any consequences of his actions? | | |
| ▲ | blobbers 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | It sounds like this stuff is underground sound so maybe it doesn't contaminate everything? |
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| ▲ | austin-cheney 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I see a lot of nonsense in the comments. Here are the facts: 1. Iran may or may not have been building a nuclear weapon. US intelligence says they were at least 3 years away. 2. Iran did not attack Israel. Israel attacked Iran. 3. Iran did not attack the US. The US bombed Iran only because Israel asked the US to do so. |
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| ▲ | zac23or 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Iran did not attack Israel. Israel attacked Iran. Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah are supported by Iran. | | |
| ▲ | austin-cheney 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | This is a stupid argument. It’s chaos theory. Iran receives support from Russia and China. Did Russia and China attack Israel? No, they didn’t and neither did Iran. Most of the weapons used by Mexican drug cartels come directly from the US. That does not mean the US supports the actions of the drug cartels. |
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| ▲ | geeunits 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Has everyone forgotten the music festival massacre? | | | |
| ▲ | belter 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ukraine should learn. This how you do it. Bribe enough US Senators and the US will do anything for you. Even put US military lives in danger. |
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| ▲ | andrewinardeer 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I wonder if Iran will now activate the sleeper cells they have in the US? |
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| ▲ | fastball 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What is to stop Iran from putting their next enrichment facility deep underground in the middle of Tehran? Seems even Israel might be more hesitant to target it at that point. |
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| ▲ | nicce 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Likely the reason to bomb Iran now in the first hand was internal politics of Israel. Controlling party was losing votes. Now, few bombs and problem solved. |
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| ▲ | andy_ppp 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just out of interest are large parts of Iran set to be radioactive for tens of thousands of years? What happens to all the radioactive dust? What is stopping Iran producing dirty ballistic missiles that would make Tel Aviv uninhabitable? Just the threat of nuclear retaliation? |
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| ▲ | wvbdmp 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | As I understand it, radiation is more or less a non-issue here, because uranium is only very weakly radioactive. There may be some uranium pollution at the immediate sites, but nothing like clouds of radiation blowing across the land with the wind. |
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| ▲ | throwanem 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| May as well get on the record here and now I'm against it, I guess. Not that anyone's asking my opinion, I'm from among the social classes whose job it is to go get killed in these things so the wealthy have something to be erect and/or lachrymose about. But this way at least when I'm old and facing kidney failure I can tell some smug young snot I espoused their politics before they learned the word "cool." |
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| ▲ | ozgrakkurt 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| All the discussion about who is right, wo would win etc. aside. Israel should be a big wakeup call to muslim countries. With so little population and surrounded by so many hostile countries, they manage to be so strong and be able to defend themselves. It is a big shame that many muslim countries are under dysfunctional governments and struggling to make progress so they can’t even protect themselves. Personally I don’t agree with any kind of war but it is not realistic to expect everything to be fine while fighting inside your country, with a backwards mindset, discussing religion etc. not working honestly and expecting to prosper. |
