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"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.
I've noted several times that I do not think all of Iran's actions were unreasonable.
I think that if Iran had been more restrained with its proxy networks (either directing them to refrain from behaving in such aggressive manners against the United States or cutting off ones they could not control) and pursued a more conciliatory policy towards the US and Israel, they would have had better outcomes.
They could also have pursued rapprochement with the US and tried to reintegrate themselves into the US regional umbrella as the Shah had (remember, a lot of US interest in the region was due to the Soviets and that interest did not go away when the Shah was deposed) or they could have, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union, taken the hint from Russia and dropped their nuclear weapons research. Pursuing either option would likely have allowed them better access to conventional weaponry, either American or Russian, and better access to the global market. This would have given Israel and other nations less reason to intervene (no nuclear weapons) and imposed higher costs on their intervention (more high-end weapons to defend themselves with.) They could even have continued their cooperation with Israel after the Iran-Iraq war. Israel might have been willing to continue helping them maintain and build out their conventional forces as a counterweight to hostile Sunni states. Instead, Iran's aggression towards the United States, Israel, and their Sunni neighbors created a powerful regional coalition against them, while their pursuit of nuclear weapons alienated Russia (which to be fair maintains good relations with Israel in any event.)
Or, they could have tried to coalition build with their Sunni Muslim neighbors. This would be mutually distasteful, but the United States listens to Saudi Arabia, and a more restrained Iran that was not-hostile towards the United States and not-friendly towards Israel could have coalitioned together to prevent Israeli aggression.
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.
Iran did none of this. Instead, they pushed the Saudis into the corner with the Israelis, alienated the Russians, and angered the Americans.
Giving the Houthis the ability to dictate US policy by threatening to cut off international trade is not really a great idea.
Which Iran signed!
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.
Sure, I am open to the possibility that the US leaving the JCPOA was a bad idea.
First off, to be clear, Israel doesn't border Iran; they are separated by about 500 miles of other countries. (They are all arguably in the same neighborhood, that's fair enough!) Secondly, other nations, including ones actually bordering Israel, haven't pursued the path that Iran has, though, even if they have reason to be fairly hostile to Israel (or even if they are probably conducting illicit nuclear weapons research.) So the idea that Iran has had no choice but to do all of this doesn't really seem correct.
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.
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.
Yes, this is why the US hit Soleimani (for killing Americans, not so much for the torture although maybe he did that too). So it seems like we're both agreed that US retaliation against Iranian assets when those Iranian assets kill Americans is, in fact, reasonable?
I am very sympathetic to Iran's position (AIOC seemed to be doing shady stuff!) but moving from a contract dispute to seizure is pretty escalatory. And even if it was entirely justified, they had to have anticipated a negative British reaction.
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