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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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But if we don't care about occupying but are happy to just kneecap them if they try to build a nuke, or a missile stockpile, or bioweapons, there ain't much they can do but sponsor low level terrorism against our civilians.

It is not clear to me at all that Israeli conventional airstrikes will be able to permanently keep either the conventional or nuclear weapons program of Iran in check. For example, Russia likes to use Iranian military drones in Ukraine, so that is already one big power which might support them in their capabilities to produce conventional weapons despite your efforts to kneecap them. China probably sees Iran as an important counterweight to US-leaning regional powers like Israel or Saudi Arabia.

So far, Iran has for the very most part only sponsored deadly terror against Israel, not the West in general (Bin Laden was Saudi, after all). As someone who was around in the early 2000s, let me assure you that what was ultimately an act of "low level terrorism against our civilians" managed to shape US politics for the better part of a decade and let to the West going on a wild goose chase.

Now, if your model of the Ayatollah regime is that the probability of them nuking Israel within hours of gaining the ability to do so is close to one, and that they are willing to sacrifice most of their population centers to the inevitable Israeli retaliation, then yes, trying anything to keep them from getting nukes might be worth the costs.

Or your model of the Ayatollah regime might be that while they are rabid antisemites who are serious about destroying Israel, they are also hypocrites in that despite their public statements, they would not like their children to become martyrs. Then bombing the shit out of them to delay them from acquiring nukes might be actively counterproductive in that once they have nukes, they are much more likely to use them.