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To believe in US defeat you have to believe the US is so squeamish that we'll beg Iran to re-open the SOH and in exchange offer to let them build nuclear weapons with impunity.
Stabilizing the strait may be costlier than we would like and somehow we'll do this public good alone, as usual, but not as costly as letting Iran have nukes.
I don't think Iran having nukes, in and of itself, would be costly for me. I estimate the chance of a nuclear-armed Iran using nuclear weapons against the US to be extremely low unless the US for some reason launches an existential war against the nuclear-armed Iran, which I also think would be very unlikely to happen.
As for a nuclear-armed Iran's ability to disrupt global shipping, I also do not care about that. A nuclear-armed Iran would likely prefer to be integrated with the global economy, just as it prefers that now over being sanctioned, and would not benefit from being heavily sanctioned if it tried to strong-arm itself into control of the Strait of Hormuz.
If Iran had nuclear weapons, it would be able to more successfully deter US and Israeli geopolitical ambitions in the Middle East, but I don't care about those ambitions.
The only thing that actually bothers me about the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran is that having nuclear weapons could help to stabilize the Iranian government and its authoritarian chuddism, with negative consequences for its population. But then, the current war has so far also been bad for the Iranian population. So far they are getting a really bad deal: getting bombed, their economy damaged, but without the government being replaced by a better one. And that seems unlikely to change barring a US ground invasion or a sudden collapse in the government's structural integrity. So it's not like the US is actually pursuing a policy that is focused on helping the Iranians to get a better government.
I would have to disagree with this. The leadership regularly chants "death to America" and has done so for some time. It's reasonable to believe that this means what it seems to mean. Iran has regularly attacked Israel even though Israel would gladly accept an uneasy peace with it just like Israel has with Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE.
Even if the US did absolutely nothing to harm Iran, Iran's leadership would still have strong incentive to harm the US if they thought they could get away with it. As a way of gaining clout in the Muslim world.
I'm sure that Putin and Xi also say the Russian and Chinese equivalents of "death to America", but I don't worry about the possibility of a Russian or Chinese nuclear first strike on the US.
India and Pakistan have attacked each other through proxies before, yet neither has launched a nuclear first strike on the other despite extreme levels of mutual hatred and the fact that both have nuclear weapons.
This is like saying you've never had any issues picking up pennies in front of a road roller.
I wish people would stop pretending there's no difference between these egomaniac dictators or near-dictators. Putin is a cold war veteran, Xi is a lifelong bureaucrat. Neither of them are islamic extremists.
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Actually not at all. It's not hard to find Chinese state broadcasts and nowhere does Xi say anything remotely close to death to America.
In fact the Chinese largely couldn't care less about America beyond the fact that we buy their shit and give them money for it.
I mean in private.
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I'm pretty skeptical of all this.
Please provide links and quotes showing:
(1) Three times in the last 25 years that Russian leadership has done the equivalent to chanting "death to America"
(2) Three times in the last 25 years that Chinese leadership has done the equivalent to chating "death to America"
(3) Three times in the last 25 years that India has attacked Pakistan through proxies in a manner equivalent to Hezbollah or Houthi attacks on Israel;
(4) Three times in the last 25 years that Pakistan has attacked India through proxies in a manner equivalent to Hezbollah or Houthi attacks on Israel.
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I consider it a revealed preference that Iran is willing to plunge themselves into darkness over pursuit of nuclear weapons. It's fairly clear that they can resist insurgency and invasion just fine without them and that they would be a lot less isolated if they weren't pursuing them, but they persist. They could have security just fine without them: they're not in Saddam's or Gaddafi's position, the IRGC survives despite decapitation. Their territory is huge and difficult to conquer.
They want nuclear weapons to service their global Islamic Chuddist revolution.
They had a growing nuclear medicine program, while facing sanctions which had the practical effect of limiting their medical imports:
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/12/iran-sanctions-medicine/
https://dw.com/en/iran-sanctions-mean-life-saving-medication-in-short-supply/a-74825554
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/iran-unveils-new-nuclear-medicine/
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I disagree. They cannot actually resist invasion without them. They are perpetually one hawkish US administration that has enough political capital away from being invaded and replaced.
If the US committed to a ground invasion of Iran, the US would easily and quickly topple Iran's government. It would be like a world heavyweight boxing champion fighting a scrawny 15 year old. US soldiers would be in Tehran within a few weeks of the start of the conflict. What would follow would, from the point of view of the current Iranian government, be horrible. They have seen what happened to Saddam and to Gaddafi. They would be turned over to their political opponents, put on trial, their lives as they knew it over, some possibly executed. They're in danger of assassination every day now, but at least they still have power and the emotional satisfaction of not having been defeated. A US invasion would be the end of everything for them.
Would they like to use nuclear weapons in support of their global Islamic revolution? Sure. Would they actually use nuclear weapons in a first strike? I doubt it. When I look at their actual foreign policy in the recent decades, they haven't been acting like ISIS-type fanatics. The most reckless thing they did was to support Hamas too much, and then Hamas massacred a bunch of Israeli civilians, which made Israel unite even more than before around the goal of destroying them by any means necessary. But that does not necessarily mean that they follow a fanatical foreign policy any more than the fact that the US supported an Indonesian government that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the 1960s means that the 1960s US was following a fanatical foreign policy.
What's interesting is that the Trump administration is the one administration that genuinely does not seem to care about if you are a "bad guy" or not – the Trump admin has been extremely functionalist.
However, the Trump administration can only do so much to bind the actions of a future administration, which creates a real risk for Iran.
I think on balance if they don't make the Trump admin a good offer (and they still can) they will come to regret it.
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Some times I forget how naive and anti American many of the posters are on this forum. This take hugely discounts the tail risks of having an unstable country with a history of exporting terrorism having these things. What if the leadership changes in the future or some part of their government, or if it results in other middle eastern countries proliferating as well.
Yeah it's absurd. One of the greatest threats to the entire planet is Pakistan losing a war to India. Or winning a war to India. Or tripping over its own feet and having an economic crisis.
As soon as nukes are in play the country becomes an existential threat to civilization, even if the more likely outcome is hundreds of thousands to millions dead...that is not good.
North Korea does not represent the full range of nuclear countries, and we haven't even played that one all the way out.
Iran is far more likely to use it, sell it, or cause problems than any current nuclear actor and the inability to recognize this is simply horrifying.
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It’s worth noting the extent to which America has exported terrorism:
We pressured Saudi Arabia to fund Wahhabi mosques globally as part of our fight against the Soviet Union
We supported the Mujahideens to the tune of 4 billion USD
We produced millions of violent jihadi textbooks for the youth in Afghanistan (lmao)
Of the ~100 Islamic terror attacks in America since the 90s, virtually all of them have been Salafi-Wahhabi and none of them have been Shia (Iranian).
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Agreed. Even if we accepted for the sake of argument that the Supreme Leader himself would not order a first strike, how confident are we in the rest of the Iranian regime's command and control infrastructure?
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Why can China be the biggest trading partner with most middle eastern countries without wasting trillions on wars? What has the US gained from all these wars? Supporting wars that flood Europe with migrants is anti war.
Iran wouldn't want nukes if the US wasn't meddling in the middle east.
The terrorists that bomb the west are Sunni groups that Iran is fighting. Iran helped defeat ISIS and fought all sorts of extremists in Syria.
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That doesn't worry me any more than I worry about the slight chance of getting hit by lightning when I walk outside while it's raining.
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Iran didn't have nukes before the war despite Netanyahu claiming the bomb is weeks away since the 90s. Currently 20% of the world's oil, several decently sized economies that invest heavily in the US, a large portion of global LNG, and 35% of the world's helium are under blockade. This is in order to fight a war to go back to the way things were two months ago.
Had Iran even wanted nukes if it wasn't for the constant threat of American war? The US needs to fight the enemies while the constant war creates the enemies.
This war could easily end up dragging on for an extended period of time. Nobody enters a war thinking the war will last for many years yet wars often do. The US could easily be stuck in a quagmire that drags on and becomes a story that never stops giving.
So if Iran doesn't want nukes then why is giving up enrichment such a deal breaker for them? They'd rather apparently be all killed than negotiate on this.
They do want nukes. No matter what one's opinion about the war is, and mine is against it, the fact is that they clearly want nukes. They would be insane not to want nukes. Having nukes is just better in almost every way than not having nukes, if you can afford the high price tag of building and maintaining them. For Iran's government nukes are the only possible way of guaranteeing their system's survival, other than a Russian or Chinese commitment to defend them in case of war, which does not seem to be forthcoming.
I don't think this is the case based off of the game theory of nuclear weapons - the rational response to a country with significant interest in tremendously harming the West nuclearizing is to turn the entire country into glass regardless of casualties the minute it becomes obvious they'll nuclearize. The threat is too severe.
In real life the anti-nuclear taboo would prevent this from happening, but the moment Iran steps out of line the response would immense and civilization ending with tens of millions dead.
We barely made it out of the Cold War and that's with both countries not wanting to use nukes and both countries mostly believing that the opponent didn't want to use nukes (even if for no other reason than nukes = death for everybody).
But Iran wants to use nukes! Some people in the government might not even care if they get away with it because of the religious extremism.
The odds of everybody in the country dying are basically zero in the pre-nuke state. Hopefully the odds would be not great, but you'd have a very real chance of tens of millions of causalities post-nuke.
Having nukes would present at tremendous risk both to the people and the government.
Now, the government likely is totally fine with risking the entire population to persevere itself.
That's a pretty good indication to justify wiping out the Iranian government.
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If you believe the Omani negotiator, Iran was willing to give up their stockpile and enrichment in exchange for sanction relief; that was likely the point of building the stockpile in the first place. Once the US tried to regime change them, the calculations shifted.
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The bomb likely has been weeks away since who knows when. It still could be for all I know. Because they haven’t fully enriched is not evidence they can’t. It’s evidence that they continually chose not to do so. At this point, proceeding to make a few nuclear weapons is their best bet to not be attacked again.
It doesn’t prove either one actually, and it’s probable that Israel has prevented it more often than we know about (the Suxnet incident where Israel destroyed centrifuges). So it could be that they want to have nukes, and left alone would have them but they’re being artificially prevented. I don’t see why else they’d have such a fixation on nuclear power in the most oil rich region of the world and while being sanctioned for having nuclear energy. Especially given their reluctance to fully comply with inspections.
The things they’re doing certainly are consistent with wanting a nuke, and at least believing that one could be made in Iran.
It's not even their fixation on nuclear power that they were sanctioned for, it's their fixation on uranium enrichment significantly beyond that which is needed for nuclear power.
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Yes. I don't understand why we need to wait until they have 99% completed a bomb to take them seriously when they pony up to the negotiating table with their balls out and say "as you can see we have everything we need to build a bomb, including long range bomb delivery missiles; so, what are you going to to give us?"
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