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They never had a nuclear weapons program. That is not a real thing. No expert has alleged that. I think everyone would be okay with quietly destroying a legitimate nuclear weapons program in Iran. But that’s not even a card on the table.
Why would this be a proportionate response to their arming Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups which pose 0 threat to America and only the tiniest threat to Israel? Why would we even be interested in turning Great Civs to dust? This is not a noble pursuit. It seems sociopathic. The ideology behind this isn’t even found in Albanian blood feuds, which have some measure of honorable proportionality. This is like African Warlord moral reasoning, or ISIS reasoning. Iran is filled with people, some of them are very smart and talented. It’s a more aesthetically beautiful country than Israel. It has cool art. If you’re interested in urban architecture, you’ve probably seen modern Iranian buildings online without knowing it. Americans (before the conflict) could just go to Iran and travel. You could be invited to someone’s home. You would be treated with more hospitality than an American treated in some religious quarter of Jerusalem, by whom you would considered an eternal stranger.
An actual problem plaguing America is the amount of drugs that come from domestic and Central American gangs. This actually threatens us. Horrible casualties from drugs. we can actually just blow up these gangs, and it would be both morally sound and effective. The cartels work with the Mexican deep state (really), and we can declare war and blow them up to save American lives. But why would I want to destroy Mexico forever just because they are responsible for some tens of thousands of dead Americans, unless I am a genuinely evil person? I wouldn’t even want us to target the homes of Mexican soldiers, which I think we are doing in Iran right now. Do we really think that we will be hegemonic forever (note the demographics), so we don’t fear China will use the same strategies against our grandchildren in 2126?
Consider that America gains power in negotiation with Israel and the Gulf Arabs if there is a strong Iran threatening them. This makes us wealthier and safer: we can obtain more things, including technology, for less under the promise of our protection. If Iran is taken out, our advantage over these foreign countries is weakened. We have also closed the door on getting anything from Iran, which sucks because we could have certainly recruited hundreds of their 150 high iq human capital in exchange for sanction reliefs. That would have helped us against China!
You state that Iran never had a nuclear weapons program but many organizations most notably the IAEA and the Iranian Government themselves have claimed otherwise.
You ask "Why would this be a proportionate response to their arming Hamas and Hezbollah?"...
...and my response is that I never claimed that it was "proportionate". In fact, I see no reason why it ought to be "proportionate". What I believe I said was that bombing them to a pre-industrial tech level was preferable to the letting the IRGC have access to nuclear missiles.
You talk about how a powerful Iran granting us leverage? My reply to you is that you're looking at the small picture, I'm looking at the fact that over 3/4ths of Iran's oil and just over a 1/4ths of the rest of the Gulf State's oil is bound for China and we want ensure that the Petro-Dollar stays a Dollar and doesn't become a Yuan because, once again, "if the US is going to occupy the role of hegemon we must play the role."
My question for you is do you think that allowing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to have nukes would have a stabilizing effect on world affairs or do you agree with me that it would have a destabilizing effect, if the latter how much of a destabilizing effect?
If you care about stability as a terminal goal, then we need to get rid of Israel’s nukes, and also get them out of their occupied land, which is a precondition for normalization among the Arab nations. But I don’t think pro-Israelis care about “stability”, they just care about Israel.
Which land is that, exactly? "From the river to the sea?"
I would not characterize myself as "pro-Israel" but it's weird to me that you (and many, many others) present anti-Israel as the neutral position. The fact is, a significant percentage of Muslims will not be satisfied with anything less than the total annihilation of Israel. If the Muslims and Arab colonists terrorizing the non-Muslims in the region stop fighting, there will be no more fighting. If Israel stops fighting, there will be no more Israel.
Of course, "no more Israel" is plausibly a more stable equilibrium than "some Israel remaining!" But I don't think one needs to be "pro Israel" to suspect that "just somehow convince all the Jews and Christians to vacate the region, or agree to be subjugated under under Islamic rule" is neither a humane nor a plausible position.
According to Saudi Arabia, normalization is possible with a return to 1967 borders and a sovereign Palestinian state. My suggestion is that if “stabilization” was what we really wanted, this would stabilize the region.
I’m not so sure. Israel, as a condition for their recognition of a Palestinian state, can ask the Arab monarchies to enshrine its borders into law and penalize those who openly call to dispute these borders. I think MBS would genuinely consider doing this for regional stability, but would Israel ever consider it? (Likely not, they want more land!)
I do not think there is any country safer in the Middle East than Israel. They are nuclear-armed, they have western leaders constantly harkening to them, they have the most sophisticated intelligence network by a large margin, the have an incredible tech sector and they have an extraordinarily wealthy and committed diaspora located throughout the world. No single group is safer. I just do not see a reality in which Israel is threatened.
Sure, that clearly matters.
Perhaps not! And yet your own recommendation seems to have been in part--
By your own logic, Israel should give up (at least some portion of) their safety. And my response was, and is--that is not plausible, but even if it was, it seems very likely to end badly for them.
I mean, sure, #notallMuslims, but as a rule a majority of Palestinians report that their preference is for Israel to cease to exist. (I believe that the reverse is now true as well, though my memory is that it did not used to be--most Israelis today apparently report a preference that e.g. all Palestinians be expelled from Gaza. I'm less sure about the West Bank.) Likewise, Egyptians do not seem to favor the existence of Israel. Other Muslims in the region seem to broadly follow this pattern. People want peace in theory, and favor de-escalation in principle, but are nevertheless comfortable with the proposition that Israel should not exist, that they should not do business with Israel, nor accept aid from Israel, nor come to Israel's aid in case of a natural disaster, etc.
Muslims are a diverse group, with a lot of factions and infighting, so there are always counterexamples, of course. Whether they should be required to coexist with Jews is an interesting question! But as things stand, I do not think there is very much likelihood of Muslims willingly coexisting with Jews anywhere Muslims wield significant political influence. I don't think it requires a person to be "pro-Israel" to observe the reality of public opinion among the Middle Eastern Muslim demographic clearly favoring the destruction of Israel. Realistically, I suspect that without the United States' continued involvement, we would eventually be looking at the genocide of Middle Eastern Jews as an inevitable historical outcome. Perhaps it is inevitable anyway. But certainly there is no Israeli capitulation beyond mass migration that I see the Muslim world accepting on a permanent basis, and I'm sure Israel knows that; certainly, they are beginning to behave as if they know it.
(But only beginning. If Israel still exists in 200 years, it may only be because they have, and perhaps will have used, nuclear weapons.)
The problem with Israel having nukes is that it incentivizes other states to have nukes. While the Israelis may be solipsistic enough to feel they are the only ensouled and rational creatures dwelling in the Middle East, we can’t actually expect other sovereign states and cultures to feel this way. If what we want is regional stability, then enemies don’t just get a vote, they also get theory of mind and dignity. Would Israel be fine with Oman getting nukes? Egypt? Is the region safer with Saudi Arabia under the nuclear umbrella of Pakistan? (Do you know that was triggered by Israel breaking all international norms by trying to kill a negotiating team in a sovereign country? How might a rational country change their policies after witnessing that?)
A majority of Palestinians exist in a perpetual post-9/11 state due to the relentless Israeli atrocities that go unpunished. Just this week, the stories are that a family of five was gunned down in the West Bank, while another family was tied up and raped as state-sponsored Jewish-supremacist terrorists beat random women and stole their valuables. This comes as the Defense Minister of Israel has apologized to five IDF rapists, believing that they should not have been charged for raping a detained prisoner, an act that was corroborated by the chief lawyer of the IDF (since resigned), a medical report, and a video. Just this week.
In any case, the surrounding Muslim countries have genuinely sought normalized relations contingent upon a Palestinian state. That was behind the Abraham Accords (no settling in West Bank). Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait are all willing to do this, unless you think they are just making things up. Turkey’s relationship with Israel has soured because of Gaza which shows that they are genuinely interested in Palestinian rights. Wouldn’t Jews behave the same way if the roles were reversed? If there were a group of oppressed Jews somewhere in the world, then Jewish communities worldwide would be pressuring their governments to intervene.
Okay, but it's not clear to me what I am supposed to conclude from all that.
I am trying to speak as descriptively as possible, here. If you think Israel should not exist (is that what you think?) then like--I don't have much to say about that. I'm not interested in (or, probably even very capable of) defending any particular Israeli action on the international stage. The country exists. Like all countries, I'm confident that they get up to some shady stuff. I don't know all the answers to your (rhetorical?) questions, but I don't think that any of them have any substantive bearing on my point.
We do see some of that, though interestingly some American Jews seem to also be of the view that Israeli Jews should, ultimately, be subjected to mass migration or genocide (though they would not phrase it that way, it would be the result of their advocacy succeeding). Politics makes strange bedfellows! But one perhaps important difference between Middle Eastern Muslims and Middle Eastern Jews is that there are many Muslim countries, both in the Middle East and outside of it, and there is only one Jewish country. Strangely, very few Muslim countries are therefore willing to open their borders to Palestinians. Indeed, in many Muslim circles, Palestinians are scarcely better than Jews! Outside of Israel/Palestine, the Middle Eastern Muslim attitude toward Palestinians seems to be that they are useful idiots and foot soldiers, but you wouldn't want your daughter to bring one home for dinner.
If you're right that (A) Israel's nukes are what is substantially destabilizing the region and (B) Israel is safe because it has nukes then you are suggesting, deductively, that the stability of the region depends on Israel no longer being safe. I think that what I am doing here is agreeing with you, while pointing out that "therefore Israel should stop being safe" is neither a humane nor a plausible solution to the problem as you've described it. Indeed, it seems like your real argument boils down to something like "Israel's existence is what destabilizes the Middle East, so probably the rest of the world would be better off if Israel didn't exist."
I have my doubts about this--I think that the Middle East would be filled with different conflicts, absent Israel--but even if I'm wrong about that, I find myself quite unable to endorse "allow the expulsion and/or extermination of Middle Eastern Jews and Christians from Israel/Palestine" as a humane approach to the problem. YMMV! But that seems like one hell of a Danegeld.
The Muslim nations surrounding Israel are not saying “Israel shouldn’t exist”, no one is saying that there, they are saying “return to determined borders and give Palestinians freedom, and in return relations are normalized”. (The object-level discussion is on whether stability is desired.)
Because having a lot of land, or being in a large religious tent, does not give an alien people the right to take land illegally. This does not absolve the crime. Just like I can’t just steal a percent of a Jewish billionaire’s bank account simply because his group owns an enormous amount of resources globally. If I were to do that as a sovereign nation, many Jews would get mad and petition their government to destroy me. There is only one Jewish country because Jews are 0.7% the size of Islam (and only half of them have a desire to live in Israel, so it’s more like 0.4% factoring for Muslim diaspora). In other words, they are owed one tiny country if we intend to allocate countries based on size. They do not deserve more than one country if your framework for deciding these things is population size. If those countries opened their border, Israel would close their border on Palestinians forever, stealing their land, as they have done in the past.
This was, also, the Ashkenazi opinion on mizrachim. Yet they are only nation regardless.
No, you would need to prove that Israel is “no longer safe” if they don’t have nukes, and then you would have to explain why this wouldn’t apply to Saudi Arabians or Syrians or Egyptians. Israel would be plenty safe even without nukes.
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