hanikrummihundursvin
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User ID: 673
hanikrummihundursvin
2d ago
It sounds like a negotiating tactic to put someone under pressure via a deadline.
I'm sure he wrote something similar in 'Art of the Deal'. Not sure if you can transfer the intended effect over a social media post in the context of a deadly civilizational conflict.
I had firm belief that Ukraine would sue for peace after they weathered the shock of the initial attack by Russia. But it turns out you can just ignore the obvious disaster on the horizon and condemn hundreds of thousands of men to their useless deaths.
Honestly feels like reality lost its training wheels after that and anything is now possible regardless of how obviously stupid it is.
That being said, I'd wager against further escalation in this specific direction if only because Israel is allegedly very vulnerable to retaliation. Now, how true is that? I don't know. Maybe the Israeli government has tunnel vision on the idea that this is their final chance to knock Iran down a peg, so the risk is worth it.
My prediction is Trump will bomb something else and successfully pivot to that being a victory.
hanikrummihundursvin
2d ago
There is a lot of hyperbole on this topic and it's easy to get lost in the sauce.
There are, however, some key elements that are a bit too big to just be swept under the rug.
And if Europe is left without oil - it is their own fault for antagonizing Russia.
This seems like a pretty big swipe. Especially considering Europe has already been the garbage dump for all the trash Israel and American wars have caused in the middle east.
Is there no concern Europe will eventually just either have enough or take on so much trash it can no longer function as an ally? Seems like we are already seeing signs of that with UK's reluctance or Spain's flat out refusal to aid in the war so far.
hanikrummihundursvin
3d ago
If Iran had showed more restraint whilst the US was either in the process of financing an invasion of them or directly invading their neighboring country of Iraq? That Sunni neighbor that had just failed in their invasion of them? Or whilst America and Israel were destroying Syria and Libya?
Not having WMD's didn't help Iraq or Syria. Giving away their nuclear weapons didn't help Gadaffi, it did quite the opposite. The double standard here nullifies this position completely. Not to mention Israel's nuclear stockpile. What instances of Iranian 'aggression' are you referring to? Because we have already gone over the broad stroke instances and you have not put up much defense of them. Recognizing them as reasonable or at least rational.
Outside of the hostage crisis, I can't take your position seriously. No sober look at the Iran situation, especially considering past events, can justify it being a rational decision to depend on the mercy of America and Israel.
I feel like we are again approaching my original point of circular argumentation, where the aggression and unreasonableness of Iran is referred to without any consideration for why they took the actions they took.
Or, they could have pursued a nuclear weapon quietly instead of creating a nasty regional proxy network while pursuing conciliatory policies towards their neighbors. This would lower the perceived threat of the nuclear weapons program.
This I agree with. An either or would have been preferable. But considering the conditions, I'm not sure if it would have been plausibly feasible.
Giving the Houthis the ability to dictate US policy by threatening to cut off international trade is not really a great idea.
But letting Israel dictate US policy is? Pressuring your ally that is engaging in relentless revenge bombing that has been condemned the world over to stop, especially when the blowback starts threatening your interests in the region, is not giving the reigns of your foreign policy away. It's doing quite the opposite.
But, as I understand it, it was also a violation of the JCPOA, at least in the sense that Iran was supposed to disclose past nuclear dealings.
The JCPOA had no binding resolutions for Iran to immediately disclose all instances of previously undeclared nuclear activity. The treaty was designed to give outside organizations leverage to investigate. Those were the only binding factors aside from specific caps on material and enrichment. This is why, even in 2015 before the JCPOA was in effect, the findings of the IAEA that confirmed Iran had been seeking to create nuclear weapons prior to 2003 were not disqualifying. As those kinds of findings were exactly the kind of thing the JCPOA would help with resolving, since the treaty would give investigators leverage to get access to those sites and demand answers from Iran.
So the idea that Iran has had no choice but to do all of this doesn't really seem correct.
Considering the history of recent death and destruction with its neighbors, I can't agree, as highlighted before. Assad, Hussein, Gaddafi. At least one of them saw the writing on the wall.
I mean - shooting ballistic missiles after the US killed Soleimani was fair enough. Forming proxy networks, maybe. Mining international waters? Seems like (in hindsight) it likely hurt more than it helped. Most of the other stuff seems gratuitous.
I feel like we are getting somewhere here. So what are the concrete reasons for why the US needs to bomb Iran? Maybe instead of saying 'because they fund Hezbollah' a more honest response would be 'we pushed them into a corner and are now dealing with the consequences of doing that whilst unconditionally supporting Israel'
Sure, and it depends a lot on who you ask. The idea that the US should uphold international trade, by military force if necessary, is pretty popular in America even with people who are skeptical of, e.g., Iraq.
That doesn't seem factually correct to me. Most polling I see says that most Americans don't like either the war in Iraq, Afghanistan or the GWOT in general despite initial popularity.
It seems you are conflating wars in the middle east with upholding international trade. Invading Iraq did not help trade, nor did the invasion into Afghanistan or toppling Assad or Gaddafi. And US protecting Israel's action to bomb civilians in Gaza has only hurt international trade via retaliation from Houthis. And international trade is in a pretty terrible state because of bombing Iran and the fallout.
This position seems completely wrong. Like... Where does this come from?
So it seems like we're both agreed that US retaliation against Iranian assets when those Iranian assets kill Americans is, in fact, reasonable?
but moving from a contract dispute to seizure is pretty escalatory.
There was no dispute. The British flat out refused to even allow the Iranians to audit the company that they believed was stiffing them. I agree that it was an escalation, but what was the alternative? Let the communist party ride the issue until they won an election? Would the UK and US take kindly to that development? Something had to be done by Mossadegh, no?
hanikrummihundursvin
5d ago
"Iran made mistakes that did not best serve its national interest" is another way of looking at it.
No it's not. I've already asked you to clarify what the reasonable action for Iran would be, but you never answer. It's always a negative insinuation without context or explanation that 'Iran bad' and therefor causal.
Really. So when the United States bombed the Houthis until they agreed to stop attacking US shipping, that wasn't in our interests? When the Iranians deployed mines that nearly sunk a US frigate that was deployed to escort tankers because the Iranians were attacking oil tankers and the US bombed the Iranian navy in retaliation, contributing to the end of the war with Iraq, that wasn't in our interest?
You are again cutting off events from context. Maybe it would be helpful if we just run down the entire chain of events so my point can eventually get across when we get to the part where you disagree with US action. So I would ask if supporting action that compels the Houthis to bomb shipping is in the interest of America. Or if it would have been better to pressure Israel to stop bombing so many civilians in Gaza before it ever came to Houthis taking action. To me the answer is very clear. America loses nothing by stopping Israel and its excessive bombing of Gaza, it loses a lot by having to engage with Houthis after they disrupt shipping.
The long and short of it is that the Iranians failed to declare the full extent of their nuclear program as required by the JCPOA.
That would be a violation of the NPT. The JCPOA was valuable as a tool to coerce Iran to allow inspectors to sites where potential breaches like the one you mention occur. Iran would only be in violation of the JCPOA if they denied access to investigators and/or if the findings would reveal that Iran was using material to enrich above the set cap or that this material would in total exceed the 300kg maximum stockpile and they refused to hand it over. Findings like the one you mentioned are precisely why the JCPOA was useful.
This makes rifting the JCPOA extremely stupid as it now leaves inspectors in the dark and Iran is floating the idea of leaving the NPT entirely. From a standpoint of wanting less nuclear weapons, especially when it comes to Iran, the Trump admin made bad decisions.
Are you saying that Israel and the US cooperate, so the US has no standing to criticize Iran's actions?
What do you think "leverage that as a reason" refers to in my comment? The entire premise of the NPT is to facilitate conditions where a nuclear arms race does not occur. The US is explicitly allied with a nation neighboring Iran that did not sign the treaty and has nuclear weapons. To say Iran was allied with Israel in a similar way, or Iraq, is not getting it.
I agree that this is the case with some US actions in the region, but I am not persuaded that is the case for every action the United States has taken in the region.
Of course, I'm sure there are cases like that. But in other cases there is a clean line of causation where Iran had to take action and it is precisely because of that why I say that the existence of Iran proxies would not be a good reason to increase hostilities but rather to try to bring them down. I mean, is there a genuine belief that the forever war in the middle east has been beneficial to US interest? What are the soldiers getting blown up by Iranian proxies dying for?
As for cases like the captured US colonel, if negotiations fail, you would have to track down the perpetrators and kill them. Torture is uniquely ugly.
But as I understand it, the reason for the coup was at least in part that Iran had nationalized oil assets (basically: confiscating British property).
Iran voted to nationalize oil assets after Britain refused to allow investigation into AIOC. Iran suspected they were not being paid their fair share, which was 16% of profits at the time. On top of that, Iran wanted a new deal similar to neighboring states, which would split profits 50/50. Britain refused.
I am personally of the opinion that people outside the west do even recognize the enormous amount of technology they are given freely. Most natural resources would be no resource at all if it weren't for Europeans, their descendants and their towering technological achievements. That being said, after having allegedly been paying less that the agreed upon 16%, and after the AIOC had made profits on their original technological investment many times over, 50/50 sounds fair to me. To say that Iran was unilaterally confiscating British property is, I would argue, unfair.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
I don't know that "Iran bad" really matters, does it? Iran is, like, a little bad, sure. You seem to want to boil this down to "Iran good/bad, US bad/good" – both countries have actually in real life done rotten things and the US or Iran being a better or worse country than the other doesn't mean that the way they have conducted themselves in these particular circumstances is wise. I don't really think it was wise of the US to meddle in Iran's government, that doesn't mean it was wise of Iran to poke the States.
It's incredible that you wrote all this just to say 'Iran bad' again.
You've expressed skepticism about US "interest" as regards Iran's conduct and I am trying to explain the US interest to you
That's not correct. The point I'm making is that the hostile actions taken by Israel and the US have not served the interests of the US in the region.
What would meet your threshold for unreasonable behavior? Lying to the IAEA about their past nuclear aspirations, thus undermining the JCPOA?
That would be unreasonable behavior depending on the extent of the lies, when they were made, their geopolitical situation at the time when the research was being done. But considering their neighbor state, Israel, hasn't even signed the NPT and the hostilities between them and Iran, not to mention Iraq's use of chemical weapons and their own nuclear weapons research during a time they were being supported by the US in invading Iran, I'm hesitant to say that the US is in a position to leverage that as a reason.
When did these lies get uncovered and how did they undermine the JCPOA? As far as I've understood things, Iran was in compliance and that this was repeatedly verified up until the Trump admin invalidated the agreement.
but are you insisting that Japanese-flagged ships in some moral sense deserve to be attacked by Iran? Or that, just because Iran has decided it will help it in its war if it attacks neutral shipping, that the neutral shipping just has to agree to that?
No. I'm saying US interest and the interest of nations that depend on the US are hurt by the actions of the US in the region and that the response they get from Iran is entirely predictable.
The United States did not in any sense make them attempt to
Yes they did. At every turn the US forced Iran's hand. At every point of escalation Iran had to match it or get destroyed. You can not have a clearer line drawn in the sand than when chemical weapons are used against your people. There is no coming back from that. To act as if Iran was unreasonable when it started funding and arming proxies in the region after such a terrible war is a joke.
The one time the US offered a deal to the Iranians they signed it and stood by it until the US invalidated it. As you correctly point out, Obama did indeed facilitate that. And despite claims that it was too good of a deal for Iran, there was a host of nations that disagreed.
I do agree that we should not have facilitated the rise of the Ayatollahs in Iran or done anything in 1953.
This I find curious. Why? Would continued access to very cheap oil not be of benefit to the US?
I appreciate the sentiment, but that sort of 'tracing back the blame' game, whilst fitting in a sense, isn't what's going on here. It's not about finding ultimate moral culpability via locating the human that cast the first stone. It's about judging the actions of Iran as being reasonable or not. Sure, some historical context is required, but if a nations motivations to attack are tracing themselves back a thousand year or two, I wouldn't call them reasonable.
From a geopolitical standpoint, when people ask why we need to bomb Iran and the reason given is that, effectively, Iranians are lunatics that fund terrorists as a hobby and block trade for sport... Some context is warranted. Context that the 'bomb Iran' crowd somehow never mentions despite being obviously relevant.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
There is no real 'worst' in the sense of any moral transgression. For every single alleged Iranian misdeed there is a clear analog and reason as to why.
As an example: Iran funds proxies in the region as a continuation of the Iraq-Iran war. Where the US and other states provided direct support to Iraq so it could invade Iran. This is why there are no major 'terror' attacks by alleged Iran funded proxies prior to that invasion.
To put things into context, in total, the US has, according to AI, lost less than 1000 men to alleged Iran proxy attacks in the middle east. In contrast, the Iraq-Iran war killed at least 180 thousand Iranians. That's only counting the war and not the many thousands that die because of other US backed wars, strikes and their continued support for Israel, which does the same.
But none of this is ever mentioned by any anti-Iran advocates.
It's comical, really. The worst Iranian transgressions interventionists can point towards are all the direct consequence of their prior failed interventions.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
It's only looks reasonable if you create a small circular argument that begins with 'Iran bad' and ends with 'Therefor Iran bad and needs to be stopped'. Which is all you are doing. Comment after comment. At every turn when I ask you to evaluate and demonstrate that Iran acted unreasonably or had better options you either ignore it or short circuit and say 'Iran bad'.
I mean:
Because Iran is engaged in proxy warfare with the Saudis and Israel, we have no particular reason to believe that the US departure from the area would cause the regional crisis to cease, nor do we have a guarantee that Iran wouldn't do things such as blockade the Red Sea or Straits of Hormuz. In fact we know that Iran did this sort of thing in the past during their war with Iraq!
Now, why would Iran do such a thing as block shipping routes during their defensive war against Iraq? What could the US and other countries possibly have done to not have to deal with that? Maybe not directly back Iraq in invading Iran? No no, that's not what you respond to. You create short circular loops of 'Iran bad therefor military action against Iran good' instead.
Does Iran close the strait in peacetime? Does Iran not look to make deals with other countries to allow their ships to pass and not others? What a curious thing for an unreasonable country to do.
And here again, the exact same circular argument:
Your logic seems to be that this is all the poisoned fruit of the United States and UK meddling in Iran ~50 years ago. I think it's completely fair to criticize that decision, and to point out that it had bad consequences. But the United States did not make the only decision: Iran had its own set of decisions to make, some of them were poor ones, and that is why we are where we are.
It's just crazy that you do this again and again. What were these decisions? Where did America offer or facilitate better alternatives? If America caused the conflict to begin with by attempting to strongarm the Iranians for their oil, and then follows that up with a coup, then transitions into directly backing a full scale invasion into Iran, and in the fallout of that 8 year war never once takes a step back to deescalate or acknowledge what has transpired then how on earth can the Iranian response to this America made mess be a relevant cause towards any further escalating action against Iran? If you make a geopolitical blunder, the correct course of action is to accept the loss. Not constantly double down on it and then point to the negative fallout your failures caused as a further reason to engage in more failures.
We can think of an analogous decision, wherein we hold Germany responsible for the Holodomor because they assisted placing Lenin in power. Certainly that decision can be criticized! But so too can the mistakes and outright evil deeds perpetrated by the Soviets. It's absurd to give them no agency, and it's absurd to give the Iranians no say in their own actions.
Communism bad therefor Operation Barbarossa good? I agree that this is analogous to what the US is doing. I am asking you to consider why Germany returned Lenin with millions in cash, what the fallout of that decision was and to consider that further escalation of warfare was a bad decision for everyone.
hanikrummihundursvin
6d ago
They killed how many in total when closing that shipping route? 20? Compare that to Israel and how many they were killing when indiscriminately bombing Gaza and you don't have any moral comparison that makes sense anymore.
I'm pretty sure there are Iranians pondering the exact same thing about the US and Israel.
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