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Trump has bombed Iran's nuclear sites, using B2 bombers dropping 30,000-pound massive ordinance penetrators. All aircraft have successfully cleared Iranian airspace, and Trump is claiming that all three nuclear sites were wiped out. No word that I've seen of a counter-attack from Iran, as yet.
AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.
My feelings are mixed. I absolutely do not want us signing up for another two decades of invading and inviting the middle east, and of all the places I'd pick with a gun to my head, Iran would be dead last. I do not think our military is prepared for a serious conflict at the moment, because I think there's a pretty good likelihood that a lot of our equipment became suddenly obsolete two or three years ago, and also because I'm beginning to strongly suspect that World War 3 has already started and we've all just just been a bit slow catching on. That said, I am really not a fan of Iran, and while I could be persuaded to gamble on Iran actually acquiring nukes, it's still a hell of a gamble, and the Israelis wiping Iran's air defense grid made this about the cheapest alternative imaginable. I have zero confidence that diplomacy was ever going to work; it's pretty clear to me that Iran wanted nukes, and that in the best case this would result in considerable proliferation and upheaval. Now, assuming the strikes worked, that issue appears to be off the table for the short and medium terms. That... seems like a good thing? Maybe?
I'm hoping what appears to me to be fairly intense pressure to avoid an actual invasion keeps American boots of Iranian soil. As with zorching an Iranian general in Iraq during Trump's first term, this seems like a fairly reasonable gamble, but if we get another forever war out of this, that would be unmitigated disaster.
I'm not sure why Iran getting a nuclear weapon is such a disaster. Like, bad, yes. Saudi Arabia would nuclearize pretty much immediately and Turkey probably wouldn't be too far behind, and that means Ukraine and Taiwan, maybe Egypt too, would probably take it as permission, and...
But the Iranian leaders aren't actually insane and Iran is uninvadable anyways. Pakistan and North Korea haven't used their nukes; they're expensive dick-measuring contests that deter ground invasion and not something which even nutsy regimes would use in anger.
Turkey is NATO, we are contractually obliged to aid them when they come under attack, which is commonly understood to involve turning Tehran into a parking lot if the ayatollah foolishly attacks them with a nuke.
My problem with Iran is that I do not have a good model of just how nutty they are, really. I would model their close ally Hamas as being willing to sacrifice every soul in Gaza to kill a few 10k or 100k Jews. Presumably they are less crazy than that. It is of course much more convenient if the kids of their allies are bombed in retaliation, and the ayatollah certainly did not have a problem aiding with actions which would predictably result in a lot of Gazans killed.
I mean, if Iran's version of Islam considers any Muslim bombed by unbelievers to be a martyr who will go straight to heaven, then getting their cities nuked is what an utility maximizer would do. Then again, their past behavior indicates that they care a lot about maintaining power, and not so much about sending their population to heaven in the quickest possible way.
That doesn't scream "crazy" to me, though.
Parthia has convinced Judea, and by extension Rome, to spend many shekels destroying an enemy who were attacking from, given the wider context, strategically insignificant locations. If Judea wants to occupy that land now they'll be spending even more shekels rebuilding it and spending Judean lives clearing out their own UXO, all for the price of the lives of an ethnic group the other Arabs in the region are all OK with being genocided.
This is exactly the same trade the US is making in Ukraine. For some of the same reasons, I might add; tying Russia up in Ukraine leaves room for the US to reconquer more interesting prizes like Syria all at the cost of checks notes the military hardware that was designed to fight that exact war, that was otherwise just going to age into uselessness anyway.
And no, the use of the odd child soldier does not crazy make, especially if by "child soldier" we mean "fighting-age male, but one young enough to make Westerners big sad" (or the occasional 8 year old with a grenade for the newsreels). Even the Taliban weren't that desperate.
Ukraine's stated military objective is to keep independent despite Russia trying to annex them.
Hamas stated military objective is to destroy Israel.
Now, Ukraine's struggle is not an unmitigated success, sure, they lost territory but were still holding Kiev last time I checked.
Hamas struggle is an utter failure in military terms. If they murdered as many Israeli as they did on Oct-7 every day, they would still need two decades to genocide Israel. Nor is Israel going to use up all its bombs on Gaza and then being overrun by Arabs, or go bankrupt bombing Gaza.
I have long argued that Hamas theory of victory involves goading Israel into killing as many Palestinian kids as possible, thereby eroding Western support for them. This is a strategy which is notably worse than millennia of horrible warfare, and which I would label "crazy".
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What do you think of the use of child soldiers and also child martyrs?
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It’s been a bit of a mixed bag in craziness over the years. Ahmadinajad as president was a notorious “kill all the Jews” type but the Khamenei who always has ultimately held the reins has been a bit more pragmatic-ish. I personally think most of the allies they have promoted in the region were more cynical and self serving in purpose than religious. In other words ultimately they seem to genuinely care about keeping their own Islamic revolution going, but I don’t see them as super invasion prone. I mean 15 years anything can change but that’s the vibe.
However, theocracy type governments are particularly hard to consistently model - see for example some of the more extreme sects running out of control in Saudi Arabia and metastasizing to locations and purposes SA didn’t actually want.
It's also a mixed bag what happens during succession. That's always been the concern in Pakistan, not necessarily who is in charge at the moment, but the wildcard that happens when regimes change.
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Isn't one of their political platforms death to America?
I think that's a good reason to stop them from having a nuclear bomb.
Note that "marg bar _____", while literally translating as "death to _____", is often used as an idiomatic expression of general hostility; compare how N. W. A. were not expressing carnal desire for the local constabulary.
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Isn't one of America's political platforms to go to war with Iran? Seems like a good reason for Iran to get a nuke...
This doesn't refute America's incentives, so what you're saying without realizing it is that we're in existential conflict and should eliminate Iran.
Would Iran nuke America though? Thinking about it for more than 5 seconds, how can one honestly think they would? They act like people who care about continuing to exist (for example, their retaliations against US aggression, e.g. Soleimani's killing, are always highly calculated so as not to start a full-scale war with the US). And they must know that nuking America means they will cease to exist the same minute. So, I need more convincing that they are willing to commit civilizational suicide. Or is the idea that they're biding their time so they can reach the point where they can nuke one US city, and then having achieved that goal, they'll happily get vaporized? Somehow I doubt that.
Like the other person said:
Iran's whole shtick since 1979 has been hyperbolic rhetoric and sabre-rattling. Doesn't mean they would commit country-level suicide.
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I'm saying genocidal lunatics should be put in a box and locked away on all sides. Especially those who are somehow incapable of disentangling an 'existential' conflict between nations that exist on the opposite ends of the planet.
Perhaps you're unaware, but force projection exists.
I'm aware, now please get in the box.
Only if it's full of guns and ammo.
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Can you point to the platform of any party or politician that says "Go to war with Iran"?
Does McCain's singing bomb Iran to the tune of Barbara Ann while he was a sitting senator and on his way to being the republican presidential nominee?
It's about as close as you can get, and still, no.
So is McCain not a politician or is bombing not an act of war in your mind?
Not a political platform. A (shitty) joke from one guy.
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It's right next to Iran's political platform of 'death to America'.
No, it isn't. Iran's political platform is explicitly and publicly stated by their political leadership and their supporters. We have some hawks who will not miss a chance for an opportunistic war. You are constructing a false equivalency. Iran and the US are not the same in their terminal goals towards one another.
The Iranians chant death to America and have publicly gone to great length to explain that the slogan is not a direct wish for harm against American citizens, but a screed against their government and its belligerence and hostility towards Iran.
Which fits rather snugly as a contrast with the more Orwellian terminology of the west, like 'regime change'.
There are hawks on both sides. People expressing animus towards other peoples via slogans or discussions on TV does not have to exist as a direct analog to what terminal goals governments have towards one another. But as far as I can tell, both parties want a government that is favorable to them, and would prefer not to torpedo their own political projects in a costly confrontation.
To that extent there is no false equivalency that doesn't rely on some drastic otherization and dehumanization. And it's hard to pretend that Iran is hogging all the religious lunatics when Americans have decades of failed Zionist adjacent policies laying in their backyard. Which happens to also be Iran's back yard. Along with theologians like Ted Cruz...
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I suppose it depends on how seriously one takes their maximalist rhetoric against Israel.
The idea that they would nuke Israel is a bit silly. They would immediately get nuked back (unless they can take out all of Israel's warheads in a first strike, which they have no way of guaranteeing). And isn't the whole point that they want the land returned to the Palestinians? Why would they turn it into an uninhabitable wasteland (and kill untold numbers of Palestinians in the process)? Iran, despite what Netanyahu wants you to believe, is a rational actor at the end of the day.
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Yes that may be a disaster for Israel. How exactly would that be a disaster for the USA?
Seems like preventing a regional power that hates your guts from getting nuclear weapons is probably worth a dozen bunker busters.
There hate for us is not unwarranted.
How strong is the evidence that this action will prevent them from getting nuclear weapons rather than convince them they absolutely need them and that we are duplicitous and not to be trusted?
Their hate being warranted or not is irrelevant to our incentives. They do hate us. If they're deadset on going nuclear, we must destroy them.
Iran's only hope is to stop being so hateful. Even if they think it's justified.
Even our 'friends' hate us, we just destroy them differently.
Perhaps we should try being less horrible.
There are no friends among states.
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I don't think any president wants to have to make the call of "Hey, this country just nuked a non-Nato country and wiped them off the map. Do we... respond?"
You don't want to set the precedent that there's no response or a limited one, and you also don't want to be the one who gets dragged into a nuclear/heavy-handed military response that has to try to force regime change.
We've already tried regime change in Iran, Operation Ajax / Operation Boot. 'Our guy' was so unpopular he fell to a popular Islamic revolution.
Which non-nuclear power do you anticipate they'd wipe off the map? MAD brought stability.
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The US claims to have an interest in non-proliferation and international order. If Iran gets one, Saudi Arabia gets one. Israel already has one.
So now, instead of one independent-minded nuclear power, you have three in a region of the world a huge amount of oil and trade passes through. Lots of chances for drama. (Also, harder for the US to threaten a nuclear nation)
Maybe nothing happens. But it'd just be better to not deal with this.
Kayfabe.
More effort than this, please.
It’s awfully hard to argue with one-liners.
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Maybe the most moralistic version. But even the most detached and amoral babysitter has reason to keep their most deranged wards away from the knives.
We're supplying the knives to some of the children.
As I said in another response, we should let the quarreling foreign tribes fight.
Lots of parents deputize the one kid they think is reliable. The wisdom can be debated but it doesn't really contradict the playground cop thesis. The US also bribes countries like Egypt on the other end which fits as well.
As for letting them squabble... this'd work if a)everyone didn't already agree that the use of nukes is a taboo to be maintained and b) there was no chance of it spreading to the exact sort of groups that got Iran into this mess and c) one of these nations didn't continually insist it was in a religious war with the rest. That gives people reason to deny you a nuke.
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You're looking at it from the perspective of someone that just wants to live a peaceful life and look after their and their family's own interests. Iran getting a nuke and the rest of the ME following suit means no more imperial expansion into what is basically the nemesis of the western empire's fucked up and vulnerable back yard.
Even if there isn't enough public support for a ground war today. It keeps the option open down the road and makes color revolutions and that kind of thing more possible. As it's questionable to regime change a nuclear nation since you don't know what the power vacuum and instability will bring.
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