It's Iran. When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time. One North Korea is already one too many.

Iran has been the driving force behind a lot of instability in Middle East for decades now, and not at all shy about it. They support armed proxies and radical insurrections in the entire region - many of them internationally acknowledged as terrorist organizations.

I'm not at all mad at the US government for deciding to get rid of Iran's regime. Long overdue, the moment was picked reasonably well, the military has performed well. The broad scope planning, however, simply wasn't there. What transpired reeks of Russia style "we only planned for the absolute best case scenario, why didn't that scenario happen?"

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brandon272 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Difficult to reconcile the justification of current efforts of "Iran can't have nukes" with the unequivocal claims made less than a year ago that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been "obliterated".

https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/sunday-shows-pre...

	▲	stickfigure 29 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's possible for both of these to be true: The leaders of the US are incompetent, and bombing Iran was the right decision. "Even a stopped clock..."
	▲	ACCount37 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		They were "allegedly obliterated" by bombing the relevant facilities, which is exactly my point. I'm honestly not sure what the goals were/are on the current Iran campaign. I'm not sure the White House knows exactly, which is a very concerning thing. If it was a campaign to inflict lasting economic damage on Iran by choking its income streams, or perform a boots on the ground regime change, or to cover for a land operation to extract nuclear materials, we would see different events. But what we saw instead was a very successful strike campaign and no follow-up. No strait seizure, no land operation. I have a lingering suspicion that the assumption was "Iran will want to negotiate after the first strike exchange" and that assumption was proven wrong fast. And I already made my distaste for "only plan for the absolute best case scenario" clear.

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PaulDavisThe1st 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tell me about the problems outside of N. Korea that have resulted from N. Korea's ownership of nuclear weapons?

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stickfigure 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

North Korea started out with a "nuclear weapon": Seoul is within artillery range of the border. Consequently the Kim regime has been able to starve and torture its own population, and yes - develop nuclear weapons - without anyone willing to stop them.

You think the problems inside North Korea are ok? Koreans are human too.

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gpm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why are we ignoring the problems inside of North Korea? I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens.

That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate, with the government sponsoring everything from extorting hospitals with ransomware, to dealing drugs, to counterfeiting currency, to abducting film makers (from Hong Kong).

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defrost 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> I take slavery and starving people pretty poorly regardless of where it happens.

A great many of us feel that way, however historically GreatPowers do not - it's control of resources that move the needle for them.

Currently the US makes much of 30K protesters killed in Iran (number in dispute) but it is very much an action rooted in petro dollar geopolitics, oil, and Israel.

Starving people globally no longer get USAID .. a fractional cost compared to the Iran excursion.

The US didn't feel the need to get involved in regime change following any part of the Rwanda Genocide, and the US took the side of Indonesia (who were going for the resource control) against the West Papuans .. the US and UN turned a blind eye to exactly who and how people were tortured to get a favourable vote.

There's a long long list of starving and essentially enslaved people globally that have been ignored in favour of others by the French, the Dutch, the British, Belgium, USofA, etc.

> That said North Korea routinely acts against the rest of the world in ways that are only possible because the rest of the world is unable to retaliate

In real politik terms the same can be said about the USofA and has been said about the former British Empire.

	▲	gpm 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> In real politik terms the same can be said about the USofA and has been said about the former British Empire. Sure... I think minimizing the number of entities who have this sort of impunity is a good thing even if we can't eliminate all of them.

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krisoft 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> When the choice is "let Iran have nukes" or "bomb Iran", you bomb Iran every time.

There was also the choice of “Iran let us verify that they are not making nukes, and in return we remove economic sanctions from them”. It was called the JCPOA, and according to non-proliferation experts it worked. And then on the 8th of May 2018 Trump unilaterally withdrew from it.

Let’s not pretend that there were no other options.

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towledev 3 hours ago | parent [-]

>unilaterally

Is this a complaint? What else can you expect, given that it was unilaterally agreed to by his predecessor?

	▲	krisoft 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Unilateraly on the level of countries. The other signatories (China, France, Russia, the U.K., Germany and the EU) believed that the deal was good and Iran was holding up their end of the bargain at that time. If the USA government had credible evidence that it is not so, they could have picked up the phone and presented their case to the other signatories. Or at least to their allies. Then once those countries were convinced that something is off they could have withdrawn together from the agreement. Would have less of a terrible optics than how it went down.
	▲	defrost 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		An accord reached between Iran and several world powers, including the United States, in July 2015. Not Just Obama. Can the world be saved from central north American partisan squabbling please.

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hypersoar 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That choice is doubly false. On the one hand, there was a diplomatic option. It was working until Trump decided to kill it. On the other, it's insane to think that you can bomb a large, industrialized country of 90 million people out of the ability to make nuclear weapons short of wiping them out of existence.

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gib444 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Iran has been the driving force behind a lot of instability in Middle East

I'm loving the current stability that the USA has gifted the world and looking forward to many decades of peace and calm in the middle east. Thank you so much.

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cmxch 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> we only planned for the absolute best case scenario, why didn't that scenario happen?

IRGC sympathizers across the world that would rather have the current government than the more progressive predecessor.