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I see these circular claims being repeated in every single thread on the topic, multiple times, and I'm really tired of it.
Well, this is a broad question. A lot of things can be a 'threat', and a lot of things can be of 'interest' to America. But how do you substantiate your point that it is?
Theocratic Iran is one of America's deepest enemies.
They fund Hezbollah and Hamas
They threaten America constantly.
There's no substance or reason to any of this except the threat of Hezbollah and Hamas, which has lead to American casualties in the region. So lets dig into that.
America is in the region chasing its yet to be substantiated 'interest'. This presence causes a response from Iran. I.e. allegedly funding proxies like Hezbollah, Houthis and Hamas.
My problem here is that this Iranian response is used as a reason to be against Iran without ever demonstrating that the Iranian response is unreasonable or unwarranted. Since the 'interest' America is seeking and the means by which they go about securing it are never explored.
For instance, back in the 50's, Iran, an allegedly democratic and sovereign nation, wants to nationalize its oil production. (We can discuss the validity of that want, but as far as I can tell the original demands weren't unreasonable) America and the UK want to prevent this. So they stage a coup and replace the democratically elected Iranian government with an authoritarian puppet. The Iranian people eventually revolt and the puppet government is replaced with a particularly ideologically fervent strain of Islam.(The rise of which is not entirely unpredictable given it was the strongest organization on the ground after the puppet government had repressed most explicitly political alternatives) The existence of this new religious government is then used to justify backing Iraq in invading Iran.
It is then, 3 years into a brutal war where America is a direct backer of a foreign nation invading Iran, that had already cost over a hundred thousand Iranian lives, that American forces are targeted by alleged Iran proxies in the Beirut attacks.
With this being said, can someone now remark on the validity of this narrative, what a reasonable Iranian response to these events would have looked like, and what the actual interests of the US is in the region and how that interest is served by continuing this particular strategy. Because it seems like we are neck deep in sunk cost and past mistakes that keep compounding with every further action being taken.
Like, if the Iranian government doesn't fall in the next three weeks, and if it isn't replaced with a regime that is anti-China, Russia and North Korea but also pro-Israel, what is the gain?
Do you think attacking the merchant ships of third party nations either directly or via proxies is "reasonable?"
Wouldn't you agree that, at a minimum, the US has an interest in preventing people from attacking US merchant and naval vessels and that to the extent that Iran supports and assists the Houthis the US has an interest in preventing such future support and aid?
I'm pretty much in favor of a realistic and restrained foreign policy and have concerns about this war but even the most pacifistic and isolationist American presidents have sent the Navy to blow up the things of people who messed with our shipping and they were correct to do so.
Destroying Iran's capability to effectively wage a conventional war while also forging a regional anti-Iranian coalition comprised of everyone Iran shot ballistic missiles at seems like a benefit, particularly if the United States would benefit from withdrawing its force presence in the Middle East but is unwilling to do so while hostile actors might target US regional friends, US shipping, etc.
I have my doubts that things will play out this neatly but if we actually thwap Iran and Israel can play nice with all of its new friends we might actually get something like regional peace and perhaps the US can even more or less stop playing in the sandbox, maybe.
Even if that doesn't happen, it will likely give the US greater freedom in the future from a force allocation/contingency planning perspective.
You don't engage with the substance of my comment and instead provide more circular reasoning.
I feel like this circular response hits the heart of my post and why I made it.
Why did the Houthis start attacking the merchant ships? Was that attack not 'reasonable' given we all known that shipping is important to both Israel and the US?
What do you believe the Houthis should have done? Why should Iran not fund their proxies considering the history?
Of course. That is one of the reasons why can't understand your position. You are defending a track record that has caused all of these bad things to happen. That then causes further problems for Americas interest.
Not be hostis humani generis and attack everyone for attention. Israel doing bad shit is not an excuse to start killing everyone you can get your hands on in a giant temper tantrum. That's not a valid military target; hell, most terrorists wouldn't consider it a valid target. The groups with such nonexistent discrimination are what, serial killers, pirates and (most) mass shooters?
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.
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Both the Germans and the British used indiscriminate blockades as a tactic during both world wars. Is Winston Churchill basically a pirate serial killer mass shooter?
If the Houthis had only attacked ships going to/from Israel, I wouldn't be describing them in these terms.
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If it was reasonable, then it was reasonable for the United States to retaliate, as they did.
Plenty of things (the 9/11 attacks, Hitler's commando order, wiping out the dodo, overthrowing the Iranian government on behalf of Standard Oil) can be defended as 'reasonable' – but if I am allowed to think that the United States meddling in the affairs of the Iranian government 50 years ago is a bad idea because it its bad consequences, then I am allowed to think the same thing about Iran meddling in peaceful trade and otherwise irritating more powerful nations and causing a regional power bloc to form against them for ideological reasons.
You mention in your prior post American aid for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. You don't mention that Israel assisted Iran during that conflict. If it is reasonable for Iran to pursue a course of violence against the United States for assisting Iraq, is it also reasonable for Iran to pursue a course of violence against Israel after Israel assisted them?
Americans have had to protect their shipping since the very beginning of their nation, from the French, British, and Algerians during the era of the Founders, simply because they wished to engage in neutral trade with other nations unmolested.
And as flattering as it is for Americans to believe that everything revolves around them, they are not actually the Prime Mover. The truth is that Iran is engaged in a regional power struggle with its neighbors, many of which the United States has friendly relations with. And a very brief perusal of US involvement in the region will show that these regional power struggles create collateral losses for the United States. 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!
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
Please note, for the record, that contrary to your suggestion, I've expressed skepticism about US military action against Iran. You've expressed skepticism about US "interest" as regards Iran's conduct and I am trying to explain the US interest to you (poorly, I guess.)
What would meet your threshold for unreasonable behavior? Lying to the IAEA about their past nuclear aspirations, thus undermining the JCPOA?
The truth is that two countries can both act fairly reasonably and come into conflict anyway.
What did Japan, Cyprus, Spain, South Korea, Panama, Greece, Liberia, Pakistan, India, the Bahamas, Romania, Denmark, the Maldives, or Singapore ever do to support Iraq?
I don't even think blockades are particularly evil – like, you're at war with Iraq, you've gotta do what you've gotta do – 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?
The United States did not in any sense make them attempt to procure nuclear weapons, lie to the IAEA about their attempts to procure nuclear weapons, fund Shiite proxy forces that attacked American servicemen in Iraq, attack American vessels, fund third parties that attacked American vessels, attempt to assassinate the President of the United States, assassinate Iranian exiles abroad, purge its own military, fund terrorist groups that take citizens of foreign countries hostage and/or murder them, kill large numbers of their own people, or generally give off such bad vibes that the Russians worked collaboratively with the Americans to prevent them from getting access to nuclear material and repeatedly refused to deliver advanced weapons they wanted access to.
Some of these decisions were worse than others from a practical standpoint, some of them were arguably pretty defensible, but they were all made by Iran.
I do agree that we should not have facilitated the rise of the Ayatollahs in Iran or done anything in 1953.
This isn't true at all, President Obama specifically acknowledged the 1953 coup and made clear steps to deescalate with Iran by getting involved in JCPOA in the first place.
Germany made a massive, horrific mistake sending Lenin in with millions in cash. Lenin promptly betrayed them, and if Germany had launched a proper invasion of Russia afterwards and removed him from power (as they considered doing, and as Lenin practically dared them to do) they would likely have prevented innumerable deaths in the USSR. It's deeply unfortunate that they did not.
Whether or not that situation is analogous to the US and Iran, I don't know. But the lesson from Lenin is "don't put an ideologue in power, and if you do, take him out while he is still weak or his troops will rape all of your daughters."
It's incredible that you wrote all this just to say 'Iran bad' again.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This I find curious. Why? Would continued access to very cheap oil not be of benefit to the US?
"Iran made mistakes that did not best serve its national interest" is another way of looking at it.
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?
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.
Are you saying that Israel and the US cooperate, so the US has no standing to criticize Iran's actions? Well, Iran cooperated extensively with Israel, so by that logic they have no standing to criticize Israel's actions. But of course that's not really how any of this works, I don't think.
They were uncovered by the release of a large number of relevant documents by Israeli security services in 2018, IIRC.
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.
The US' extremely hostile response to Iran's violation of the 1955 Treaty of Amity (which the US successfully sued Iran in the ICJ over, and which established the mutual hostility of the two nations) due to the 1979 hostage crisis was also entirely predictable! England's hostile response to the Iranian nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was predictable!
Really. What did we do to force Iran to take US citizens hostage? Or lie going into the JCPOA? Or mine international waters?
Clearly not. Iran didn't escalate after Operation Praying Mantis, they made nice with Iraq, and the United States did not respond by destroying them.
The British used chemical weapons on the Germans and vice versa, does that justify eternal mutual hostility? Secondly, chemical weapons are banned because they are, basically, annoying (and arguably indiscriminate). They kill people, but so do a lot of things in war. The fact that the Iraqis used chemical weapons against the Iranians does not seem to have stopped the Iranians from attempting to pursue relatively friendly relations with the Iraqis afterwards.
I don't think this is unreasonable, actually. Creating proxy groups is smart, and Iran has used them pretty well.
But when you fund, support, and arm the proxy groups and then the proxy groups go and attack US troops and civilians, you can expect the United States (and other so affected states) to retaliate! In 1988 Hezbollah captured a US colonel who was in Lebanon as part of a United Nations mission. Despite a unanimous UN Security Council resolution demanding his release, they tortured him for more than a year before killing him. What is the reasonable response to such an action?
JCPOA was finalized in 2015. By 2019, the IAEA was asking Iran what exactly the massive crates marked with the "radioactive" sign being transported to the facility labeled "not part of an undeclared nuclear development program" were full of. Iran said "I feel like the label on my not undeclared nuclear development program is answering a lot of questions raised by the label on my not undeclared nuclear development program." Of course, when the IAEA got access to the site, they found (who could have guessed?) the presence of depleted uranium, signalling an enrichment program. Iran responded that they had been set up by an unknown third party! (Seriously, this is hilarious, read it!)
Aha, but this happened in 2019! As a response to US withdrawal from JCPOA!
Oh.
Anyway, the IAEA's found that "nuclear activities and nuclear material used therein at Lavisan-Shian were not declared by Iran to the Agency as required under Iran’s Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement." These activities were alleged to have occurred in 2003, meaning, as I understand it, that Iran's noncompliance dated to their entry into the JCPOA.
Look, reading and interpreting international arms control documents is not my full-time job, I could be getting this wrong, I certainly do not have encyclopedic knowledge of this stuff, I'm just skimming through these documents and pulling highlights, here, and I would gladly accept correction on this. But it looks to me like Iran
Well, for one thing, hindsight is 20/20. It's pretty easy to be against these things when they didn't turn out as hoped.
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). The British were considering going to war over it, and launching a coup was sort of the middle ground. I don't know that cheap access to oil was ever really imperiled for the United States, but the UK pressured us into it. So the actual US interest seems...sort of 'meh' to me.
And hey, maybe I am too quick to dismiss the validity of the US action. The US coup was arguably (at least, by the time is was implemented) a counter-coup against Mosaddegh after he tried to aggregate power to himself (at the expense of the traditional power of the Shah). But it still engendered ill-feeling, and ultimately did not seem to pan out.
It's a complicated topic, though, and I do not understand it as well as I would like.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Well no, that doesn't follow at all.
Morally, if they're reasonable then the solution may be to solve the underlying issue.
Practically, if you don't have the ability to stop them by force (as Prosperity Guardian and Rough Rider have amply demonstrated) then the easier solution is to pull the leash on the country you actually have some influence over.
Strange how this principle doesn't apply to those who wish to engage in neutral trade with Gaza. Blockades interfering with neutral trade evidently are only an issue when they're imposed by the wrong countries. Woodrow Wilson never exercised his right to "defend free trade" when it was the Brits blockading Germany during the First World War either.
There's not really any way to "solve" the issue of states having divergent interests, but "Iran exporting an ideology hostile to most of its neighbors" has caused a lot of grief and it's pretty clear that Israel is not the only regional power who wants them to stop. One might be tempted to suggest that removing their capacity to project power would solve the underlying issue.
After the operations you named, the Houthis agreed to stop attacking US vessels, and so far have not resumed (even though the United States is attacking Iran.) This might be a good argument that (US objectives having been achieved) the current strikes on Iran are a mistake, but it doesn't seem like a great argument that the US does not have the ability to influence Iranian/Houthi behavior by force, or that Iran's decision to arm proxies and support them in a blockade against neutral shipping was, in fact, a good idea.
Well, first off, Gaza is not a sovereign state. But secondly, even though it isn't, any country who wishes to go to war with Israel over it may do so.
Yes, that's how it works, more or less. Blockades impose a cost on neutral countries, and neutral countries may then decide if it serves their interests to use military force to attempt to set things right.
This is true in the narrow sense that Wilson didn't go to war over it, but he did raise a stink about it, and the British bent over backwards to make sure it didn't cause substantial financial distress to the United States and avoided killing Americans.
The US choices in that war were the Germans (unrestricted submarine warfare) and the British (will pay you for the cargo they confiscated). The US choices in this conflict are the Israelis (won't interfere with your shipping, unless maybe it's going to Gaza, which the United States does not recognize as a state) and the Iranians/Houthis (long track record of trying to shut down access to global waterways).
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America supported Iraq while Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran resulting in 50,000+ casualties. Iran did not respond in kind on religious grounds, which is ironic; they may have used them years into the war less extensively, but the evidence for this is iffy (no UN verification)
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