Iran Catch-All | IRAN WAR

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I had long hoped we might develop Iran as an ally. I thought we might achieve this by dropping sanctions in return for a peace treaty between Iran and Israel. We could have offered aid and infrastructure development. I’ve never found their nuclear program any more frightening than North Korea or Pakistan. A significant portion of the Iranian population has traditionally been favorable to the U.S. Through peaceful engagement we might have eventually seen a democratic Iran. An attack like this turns the entire population against us. In one day we have made a forever enemy. Even if Iran “surrenders” I suspect they will redouble their efforts to produce a bomb- and they will be more inclined to use it on us rather than Israel.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Fair, but that is a calculated risk that I'm fine with. Losing a handful of people in a terrorist attack would be horrible but it would pale in comparison to the prospect of losing a million people due to a nuclear detonation 10 years from now that we could easily have prevented.
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easily? At this point, we likely have no idea what kind of damage we caused to Iran's nuclear program. Perhaps the bombs didn't work. We don't really know how easy or hard this would/will be.
 
uncleradar said:
I had long hoped we might develop Iran as an ally. I thought we might achieve this by dropping sanctions in return for a peace treaty between Iran and Israel. We could have offered aid and infrastructure development. I’ve never found their nuclear program any more frightening than North Korea or Pakistan. A significant portion of the Iranian population has traditionally been favorable to the U.S. Through peaceful engagement we might have eventually seen a democratic Iran. An attack like this turns the entire population against us. In one day we have made a forever enemy. Even if Iran “surrenders” I suspect they will redouble their efforts to produce a bomb- and they will be more inclined to use it on us rather than Israel.
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Agree. Yet another wasted opportunity by this idiotic impulse-based administration to build alliances to expand US power. We become more isolated and vulnerable by the day.
 
Reflecting back 20 years ago ( something one can do who was born around 1980 )...

everything old is new again
 
ZZLPHeels said:
They aren't going to give up in their quest for a nuke, but they also can't manufacture one overnight. Hence the secret underground nuclear development facility that we just destroyed. It is hard - very hard - to manufacture a nuclear weapon. We just made it a million times harder for them.
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Ain't that hard. North Korea did it. Iran is much richer.

The reason that the Iranians don't already have nukes was stuxnet. Nobody died from stuxnet, except Iranian centrifuges. And the reason that we were able to get stuxnet onto the centrifuges, apparently, is that so many Iranian scientists loathe the clerics and are happy to undermine them.

When we attack them, we cement the clerics' hold on power, and there will probably be a crackdown on scientists by the regime. I think we will find many fewer Iranian scientists to be double agents or work with our intelligence agencies. The idea, I guess, is that we topple the regime? It's not impossible, but history shows that these attacks almost never produce regime change -- and especially not regimes that are well established, powerful and with effective governance over the whole country.

We didn't destroy their program. They will have a nuke in a few years. And they will be more incentivized than ever to use it.

Like, if you are afraid that a crazy Iranian religious nut will nuke America, this bombing makes that more likely over the long run, not less likely.
 
ZZLPHeels said:
Well, we certainly aren't going to be nuked by Iran anymore. My list of worries this morning is much smaller than it was yesterday.
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Certainly? You are posting with a lot more confidence than the known facts on the ground warrant. Rule No. 1 of military actions is that both sides lie about what is actually happening for propaganda purposes.
 
Paine said:
No, it’s not. It’s grounded in an Orientalist fantasy that paints Muslims, especially when they resist U.S. or Israeli power, as irrational, apocalyptic, and incapable of strategic thinking. Iran’s leadership, for all its authoritarianism, has consistently acted according to a logic of deterrence and regime preservation.

You don’t survive decades of sanctions, regional war, and international pressure by being reckless. You do it by being patient, calculating, and rational. The “they’re just religious fanatics” line isn’t analysis. It’s a permission slip for more violence.

North Korea has nukes. Pakistan has nukes. Israel has nukes. The only reason we pretend Iran can’t be trusted with deterrence is because we’re not ready to admit this was never about nukes.
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And if we could have prevented NK from obtaining nukes with a precision strike with essentially no military risk we would have. Sometimes you have to take the opportunities that you are given.
 
dukeman92 said:
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So it's true that even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in awhile. Of course, now that Dear Leader has bombed Iran I'm sure that by this afternoon she will have forgotten all about this post and will be 100% behind Dear Leader. And as MAGAs never double check anything her statement here will be forgotten by tonight. It's the MAGA way.
 
BlueSmoke said:
Any other President could pull it off. So you're betting Trump can? Comforting.
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No, I would greatly prefer a different POTUS was making this decision rather than the one who helped create the current situation by pulling out of the JCPOA.

I fully admit I could be catastrophically wrong in my view, just owning up to it. I was dead set opposed to the invasion of Iraq under GWB and still consider it one of the worst foreign policy debacles in U.S. history. I am assuming (hoping) this is a very limited engagement in Iran and that Trump genuinely fears (for purely political reasons) engaging in a wider war, and believe the opportunity now is quite different than any time this century due to Iran’s political and military weakness and isolation in this moment.

I do think that any POTUS should have sought Congressional authorization in advance, that more data should have been shared with Americans to justify this prior to acting and that we are owed more information about plans for the political and military response to this action. We also need some plan for confirmation of the success (or not) of the effort and how to make this stick by preventing reconstituting a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

One of the obvious risks of this action is confirming to Iran that the continued existence of their regime depends on obtaining a nuclear weapon to give them similar protection as North Korea. But I think that (a) the Iranian regime already thought this regardless (though the strikes may convince the general populace) and (b) North Korea has a handler in China that makes that risk a bit different than Iran, which is more its own master and has a stated goal of destroying the Great Satan (U.S.).
 
Paine said:
No, it’s not. It’s grounded in an Orientalist fantasy that paints Muslims, especially when they resist U.S. or Israeli power, as irrational, apocalyptic, and incapable of strategic thinking. Iran’s leadership, for all its authoritarianism, has consistently acted according to a logic of deterrence and regime preservation.

You don’t survive decades of sanctions, regional war, and international pressure by being reckless. You do it by being patient, calculating, and rational. The “they’re just religious fanatics” line isn’t analysis. It’s a permission slip for more violence.

North Korea has nukes. Pakistan has nukes. Israel has nukes. The only reason we pretend Iran can’t be trusted with deterrence is because we’re not ready to admit this was never about nukes.
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You are 100% correct here. I don't think your political program benefits from terms like Orientalist. I'm almost positive that your interlocutor here has no idea what that means, and probably is going to skip over it rather than think about or ask. And you know what? There's no reason he should know what that means. Very few college grads do unless they study in a particular discipline. I know what it means because I'm unusually intellectually curious (especially years ago) and I absorb information like a sponge.

This poster has said he's a fire fighter. Of course that doesn't mean he couldn't understand Said. But it does mean that he's unlikely to have encountered that terminology, and it's OK that he hasn't. Fire fighting is a noble pursuit, but one that takes different training. I'm positive ZZLPHeels cannot teach law. Statistically speaking, it's unlikely he ever could (generally speaking, law professors come from the top 1% of a profession culled from the top 30-40% of college grads, who are themselves the top 30-40% of the population). But by the same token, I can't be a firefighter and I doubt I ever could. Nobody wants my dumb pontificating ass fighting fires. It would be like that Simpsons episode where the nerds calculate air resistance when they are supposed to push the guy out of the way of an oncoming car.

You can talk Orientalism all day with me (though I'd get bored and probably so would you) and probably with a dozen or two dozen other posters. But my guess it that the general population of posters doesn't know what that means. Just my guess. I could be wrong.
 
an0maly said:
I didn't want to, but I watched him. I consider this the most embarrassing time in the history of American government.
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I've read in several places that the Joint Chiefs basically ignore him as much as possible, as he's regarded as an incompetent joke in the Defense Department, and they planned this strike without him for the most part. Which is a good thing.
 
The only talking point that matters is that this wasn't Trump's plan. He wanted to make a deal. This was Bibi's plan.

So if we want to know what comes next, better follow Bibi's thinking. Bibi thinks Regime change is a necessity. So watch how this evolves.
 
Calheel said:
Certainly? You are posting with a lot more confidence than the known facts on the ground warrant. Rule No. 1 of military actions is that both sides lie about what is actually happening for propaganda purposes.
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And, I in this specific case we have Trump, Trump’s Administration, Bibi and the Israeli government and military, and Iran. Add in Putin and Russia’s comments.

Not a believable or trustworthy person in the bunch.
 
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