> So signing treaties, negotiating, having mass inspections, economic cooperation -- this is nothing? As of 2015 the official policy of the US was reintegration of iran into the economic system; trump undid that briefly, but then adopted exactly the same policy until a month ago.

I was referring to this current round of sabre rattling, but if you're referring to the JCPOA, I should inform you that Iran agreed to monitoring and verification, not only under strictly restricted grounds. The deal did not give inspectors the right to freely roam. Access to military sites remained contentious and largely off limits. Iran never gave access to Parchin, for example. This meant Iran was free to continue their nuclear weapons development program - though of course in secret.

Further, the JCPOA unlocked $100B in frozen assets which the brutal dictator Ayatollah Khamenei immediately stole and used to cement his position of power. The JCPOA also lifted oil sanctions which further enriched Khamenei to the tune of $10-30B per year.

The JCPOA was commonly regarded as impotent and symbolic at best, and quite harmful at worst.

> Look at what Regan said about the USSR and vice versa, rhetoric much more extreme.

They both meant it. This is a crucial fact from the cold war. The world really was minutes away from nuclear war. I highly recommend reading the account of Stanislav Petrov [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov], a Russian lieutenant colonel, who in 1983 narrowly avoided nuclear war by heroically refusing to report an apparent missile launch by the U.S. During this period the U.S. formally developed the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine which automated nuclear launches in the event that no one was left alive to retaliate.

You use an example of two deadly serious adversaries willing to destroy the world as an example of something we should not fear?

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mjburgess 7 hours ago | parent [-]

They weren't willing to destroy the world. You do observe that sometimes one's own propaganda can backfire, esp. if its runs over years, and create a "middle management" layer of zaelots who arent aware it was for show.

So one quite important feature of stabre-ratting systems is that you don't have regieme-change instability where "lower tier zealots" who have been propagandised their whole lives suddenly take power -- because they, like the public, may be unaware it was just for show.

You're just repeating decades of US propaganda to me. I know it all. This was just a TV show put on to defend the rise of two empires, the US and the USSR -- the claims about ideology, world-destruction, communism, capitalism, etc. are all propangada. The goal the entire time, of both nations, was to expand their spheres of influence to each other's borders and to contain one another.

Here, the near entirity of iran's foreign policy is -- just like that of the US, USSR (and many other nations) -- a containment strategy for an highly militarised adversary. If iran took any other approach, israel would have invaded far earlier.

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_heimdall 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It would be a terrible strategy for Israel to attempt to invade Iran, regardless of what alternative approaches could have been taken in the past.

Israel would be outnumbered, fighting on enemy soil, and the logistics and supply chain would be insanely difficult to put in place and protect.

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mjburgess 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You cannot obtain regime change, nor end iran's nuclear capacity, without a ground invasion. Everyone involved knows this.

So either their state goals are lies, or their strategy is a losing one, or they anticipate a ground invasion.

Either way, the choice before israel/us is lose-lose.

But of course, it's imperative we take death threats very seriously, so just you know, err.. we.. err.. dont have to... err. dunno.

Of course that sentence should be, "it's imperative we pretend to take death threats seriously so that israel's ability to dominate the middle east through wars of aggression is maintained, even if that comes at the cost of the blood and treasure of the US"

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_heimdall 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Its safe to assume a state's public goals are a lie, especially during a war.

My point wasn't that their stated goals can be met without a ground invasion, it was that a ground invasion fought only by Israel will be extremely difficult for them to win, if not impossible.

I'm not sure what your point is about death threats, or what threats you're referring to. Trump has pretty directly threatened Khamenei. The threats I remember seeing from Iran are always vague and pointed mostly at a desire for the Israeli and US governments to die - though dangerous statements to make, I wouldn't consider those death threats.

Don't misread me here as defending Iran, both sides in a war are to blame and the history of this problem goes back decades.

	▲	mjburgess 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was referring to the other comment's comments that we need to take iranian threats seriously. However, if israel's goals are a lie -- the question is what they're hoping to achieve. Maybe they thought the US had the capacity to take out iran's nuclear capability and would use it, from the air; or would gamble on that. I'm doubtful. Or they think they can ramp up the escalation ladder to a degree where the US is involved in a full-blown war that wrecks iran as a functional state. This makes most sense. The combined defensive capability of western powers may be enough to protect israel during such a conflict, whilst the US/israel can wage a much more sustained offensive campaign. Either way, going around bombing iran -- civilian areas, oil infrastructure, media companies -- has only one aim: escalation. They are trying to provoke iran into ever more escalatory responses. One has to square israel's actions with what they could plausibly aim to achieve. Everything points towards climbing an escalation ladder towards a US-backed destruction of iran as a functional state. This will, of course, cost the US greatly. However there's very little evidence israel has any regard for US blood or treasure.