190 countries signed the non proliferation treaty for a very good reason, so no they don’t have the right to it in any sense of the word on the international stage.

Especially not when they’re mass murdering protestors and funding islamic extremism left and right

Dictatorships have no "rights". People have rights.

> The US and Israel are currently nuclear blackmail states.

Neither of these states have at any point said anything on the modern era that can be implied to be a threat to nuke anybody.

Part of that is because it would be a bad strategy for them, but nonetheless "nuclear blackmail state" and "nuclear state" is not the same thing.

Iran signed the NPT.

The NPT did not exist at the time of the US developing nuclear weapons, and it explicitly allows US (and other pre-existing nuclear powers') weapons.

Israel, like India and Pakistan, simply never signed it, forgoing the international nuclear technology market as a consequence but also avoiding a treaty obligation not to develop them.

No such right exists, except in moral terms, but if you are going to invoke morals, the Iranian regime does not hold up well. So no, they do not.

Perhaps you will argue that the US or Israel or Pakistan or North Korea have conducted themselves in a way where they do not have that moral right either, but that is a different debate, and either way it is moot because they do have them.

> The rational move for Iran to prevent itself from being bullied is to have nukes like North Korea

North Korea invaded South Korea, stole a US Navy ship (the Pueblo, which they still proudly exhibit), dug large infiltration tunnels under the DMZ, kidnapped hundreds, or even thousands people from SK (and Japan, to a lesser extent), and have assassinated, or attempted to assassinate, multiple SK heads of state, and perpetrated acts of terror like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858

What did the US or SK do to them before their nuclear program that constituted "bullying?"

> Does Iran not have the same rights of self-defense and sovereignty as the US and Israel?

Iran signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

[flagged]

>Does Iran not have the same rights of self-defense and sovereignty as the US and Israel?

No. If they wanted self-defense and sovereignty they should have become stronger not weaker after the revolution.

Has Israel even officially confirmed they have nukes? And who have they blackmailed with the nukes?

The contradiction is that they’re weak at this minute - militarily and economically and politically. But they won’t be this weak in the future.

- Military - their regional proxies destroyed, missile and drone stocks low, provably weak air defences.

- Economically - the currency is worthless, extreme inflation for seven years and hyper inflation for a few months, the economy is currently producing nothing due to unrest, they have a massive water shortage of their own making. They have no goods worth exporting. Their oil is sanctioned, meaning only China will buy from them and at a steep discount. And oil is extremely cheap at this minute.

- Politically - they have no friends willing to bail them out. Russia has no money to spare. China doesn’t care about anyone outside of China. North Korea is even poorer. All sections within Iranian society detest the mullahs running the government. They’re hanging on by killing tens of thousands of protestors.

Trump bets that Iran’s leaders are at their weakest since their war with Saddam ended in 1988. Meaning now is the best time to negotiate a deal where they hand over their fissile material and uranium enrichment equipment. In return they could get a heavy water reactor(s) that produces energy but no fissile material.

If he lets this opportunity slip Iran could fix all of their many problems in a year or three. Manufacture more missiles and drones. Build up their proxies once more. Maybe the price of oil recovers. Russia’s war ends and they aid Iran best they can. The economy recovers and the Iranian people stop trying to overthrow the government. Maybe a conflict starts elsewhere that draws America’s full attention.

Will Trump get that deal? Probably not. That fissile material is the only leverage the mullahs have. If they give it up they’ll be toppled like the other dictators who gave up their weapons programs - Gaddafi and Saddam.

But if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?

> Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s

Yes, although it had merit it was far worse than what can be signed now, especially the sunset clause was problematic

> Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?

that's the nature of nuclear weapons, your conventional force can be abysmal (pretty much NK situation vs US) and yet you can create epic destruction

> And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?

Yes, the thing here is the long term goal of signing a deal, whose main goal is removing the existing highly enriched uranium from Iran and restricting their ability to redevelop nuclear capabilities. Essentially this is the part where "Diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means" (to highly paraphrase), because the alternative to a deal is maintenance attacks such as these every two years

[flagged]