Israel launches attack on Iran | US bombs Iran nuke sites

uncjhodges said:
Then why do you think they’re just going to
give up in their quest for a nuclear weapon or respond rationally?
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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.
 
HandsonFire said:
Am I the only one that thinks the US military would annihilate any attempts by Iran to block the Strait? They sure couldn’t stop Israel from invading their airspace at will, why is the Strait any different?
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You need to disregard what the US military could do. If you owned a tanker, is there any way you would send it in that narrow strait knowing Iran could hit it with a pretty cheap drone, missile, or mine? And then you got the way Ukraine cleared out the Russian Navy from the Black sea. And if nothing else, it was Iran that originally perfected suicide bombers. Any speed boat would work in that case.
 
BlueSmoke said:
You need to disregard what the US military could do. If you owned a tanker, is there any way you would send it in that narrow strait knowing Iran could hit it with a pretty cheap drone, missile, or mine? And then you got the way Ukraine cleared out the Russian Navy from the Black sea. And if nothing else, it was Iran that originally perfected suicide bombers. Any speed boat would work in that case.
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There were trackers last night showing oil tankers busting a U-turn.
 
lawtig02 said:
These two posts together are a great example of the point. NOBODY knows what will happen from here. Nobody on this board knows. Trump sure as hell doesn’t know. That’s terrifying to me, but anyone saying with certainly how this will turn out is just way, way premature.
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Which, of course, is one of the reasons it would be nice to have adults making the decisions. As Rumsfeld used to say, there are the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. Presidents need to make decisions all the time with imperfect knowledge. A good president would be analytical and take calculated risks. Trump just makes decisions based on emotion and how he thinks it will sell.
 
This news is already posted here, including this for the tanker activity in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz

 
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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Dude. The Soviets got the bomb in 1949 I think. China followed. India and Pakistan have nukes. Israel has a nuke. North Korea has nukes.

All of those countries have been ruled by religious fanatics and/or even worse fanatics like Kim Jong Un. India and Israel are currently ruled by religious fanatics, and just give Pakistan a few years and they will swing back.

How many times have any of those countries used their nukes? Oh right. But you think the religious fanatics in Iran -- unlike the religious fanatics ruling those other countries -- would self-destruct? Explain how the Supreme Leader of Iran is 86 years old, then. If he didn't care about his own welfare, if he didn't care about his life, how the fuck did he get so old? Wouldn't the religious fanatic have done something, well, fanatical? Look at their councils of clerics. Old, old, old. They are not suicidal and never have been.

The burden is on you and all proponents of bombing to provide evidence that Iran -- uniquely among the world's governments -- would be suicidal end-time armageddonists. Since they have never been that way, it's going to be a tough case but we'll see what you come up with.
 
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.
 
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:
Iran has proven that they are a paper tiger. They are less than that, actually. They are a paper mosquito at this point.
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Aren’t you middle aged? Because this is some 16yo TikTok brain shit right here. My god, you think the IRGC response is comprised of the last 1-2 weeks? This is a civilization that measures itself in millennia; they aren’t going to knee jerk respond with their most substantial leverage point. The current government of Iran has survived western pariah statehood for how long? Not to mention being backed by China and Russia.

Good god.
 
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.
 
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