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Notes -
No peace deal with Iran
Can I just point out that 21 hours seems too short for negotiations? I don't think the talks were done in earnest, at all. The 150-page JCPOA took almost 2 years of frivolous negotiations and lasted just as long. A 21 hour session in the middle of an active conflict is not very likely to reach a better equilibrium that both parties are happy with. Iran carried bloodstained schoolbags of kids killed in the Minab strike on the flight to Pakistan, they were certainly not there to surrender. I suspect the administration (or at least Vance) already knew this, and deliberately structured one-sided terms intended to be rejected so Trump can attempt building political scaffolding for escalation and blame Iran ("Look, we offered Iran a peace deal and they chose not to accept it"). Meanwhile, the Israelis have been busy!
Between accepting one of the greatest strategic defeats in decades, and trying to prosecute a horrific war amidst historic energy and food prices, we remain stuck with the latter.
Why? These things are usually drawn out because America and Iran don’t negotiate directly and pass everything through intermediaries. And by Trump’s account they agreed essentially on every point except for the nuclear question. I don’t see why it would take longer than 21 hours to realize that, the idea that negotiating is this special activity that takes lots of expertise is a myth from the Georgetown school of foreign policy to promote the need for bureaucrat-scholars to run everything.
The leading theory on this forum a week ago was that Trump was losing so badly he would accept any peace deal as long as it was face-saving and he could declare victory. Not so?
America totally destroyed Iran’s military in a stunning lopsided victory. I’ve been told this was only a tactical victory because Iran now controls the straits and is using that as leverage, but, weirdly, Trump is now announcing a blockade of the straits himself. Perhaps America isn’t defeated?
I fear that denying this will have me marked as some kind of rabid Trump fanboy who can’t deal with reality but I have to point out that oil was much higher during the 2008 crisis, back when the same dollars were worth more.
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.
Lets say the US does this. Shouldn't all these other countries, such as the ones who co-signed the JCPOA, and are allegedly highly invested in nonproliferation, act on their own to prevent it? Like say Trump did the thing Europe is basically calling for him to do: Call off the war and resign, and in his speech he says something like, "I'm old, this war was too hard for me, I was soundly beaten by Iran because they are too crafty for me. I'm joining Sleepy Joe in the retirement community." If he did that, and Europe just let Iran had the bomb, that would completely and totally solidify the case that Trumpy people have been making against them for the last decade.
There is no US defeat without complete European complete embarrassment, OR mass European blood in pursuit of a military objective for the first time since 1945.
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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.
You know Iran's leadership is crazy, right?
Like they're not retarded. That's how they got so close to a nuclear weapon to begin with. But they're crazy. You know, like in the old joke about the mental patient telling the guy changing his tire about redistributing lugnuts. The real constraint on Iran nuking the US(the 'great satan') is their missile technology. Iran with the bomb would gamble, like Mao repeatedly threatened to, on being able to absorb casualties better than Israel. Islamo-posadist lunacy is something we can do without.
This is an interesting question because, once having the prestige of having a nuclear weapon; being respected as a nuclear armed state, Iran may moderate the "Death to America" stuff. Kind of like the loner when he gets a girlfriend.
Except Iran is a religious state for a religion that very intensely resists moderation, often in tremendously costly ways.
Compared to Israel, which is a territorially-ambitious religious state that condones the rape of prisoners and the incineration of the homes of minorities, and was literally founded on acts of terrorism to expel minorities, Iran comes across like a Sweden or Norway. Israel consciously starved the women and children in Gaza, causing 40% of the population to go days at a time without eating, which is quite costly and immoderate. Shouldn’t Iran be able to defend themselves from such a state?
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Yeah, Iran absolutely cannot have a bomb and Iran’s government is terrible. Lots of people hate Trump so much they are losing sight of this. There are people actively rooting for Iran on the left, which is crazy because Iran’s regime is the exact opposite of what the left wants a government to look like.
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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.
The Iranians chant death to America and the ayatollah has 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', 'liberation' or other such verbiage. Which then translates to aerial bombing campaign with large amounts of civilians killed in practice.
Outside of drastic otherization and dehumanization, saying that Iran is exporting terrorism or spouting threatening rhetoric is functionally meaningless. In context their actions are a rational consequence to US and Israeli strategy in the region. Be that state sponsored invasions of Iran, the funding of terrorists in the region or other destabilizing actions such with Syria, Iraq and Libya.
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. Along with theologians like Mike Huckabee, Pete Hegseth or Paula White.
This is silly. If you're buying this then I have a bridge to sell uou.
Realistically it's somewhere in between. You have to understand that the US is literally Hitler to theocratic Iran. Not just morally, but in its "founding legend" and historical sense of self. So America is not just some foreign country, it's emblematic of their very independence. As such, chants of "Death to America" are somewhat patriotically entwined. Of course, now that we have literally been at war, the tone will probably be a bit different for the next decade.
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If Americans say "Fuck Iran", are they expressing a literal desire to copulate with the mullahs?
"Death to America" is an idiom with a similar meaning in a different language and cultural context.
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I'm not really in the market for a bridge, but if you can sell me an alternative explanation for what Iranians truly mean and feel that doesn't rely on blank otherization of them being blood thirsty animals with no rationality or reason, I'm all ears.
The basic rule is that in assessing peoples' motivations, you pay more attention to their actions and less attention to their self-serving words. Iran's leadership has demonstrated -- through its actions -- what it means by its longstanding "Death to Israel" policy. It has been aggressively and chronically attacking Israel in general for many years now. Not just Israeli leadership or military facilities, but general attacks on everyone. The reasonable inference is that "Death to America" means something similar.
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It's amazing to keep seeing this from people who hear Trump's bombastic bullshit and turn into Amelia Bedelia.
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Sounds like a classic motte and bailey pivot to me.
For starters, please quote and link these explanations.
Do you agree that Iranian leadership also chants "death to Israel"?
Do you maintain that "Death to Israel" is similarly not a direct wish for harm against Israeli citizens?
Do you agree that Iranian leadership has directed attacks against Israeli civilians?
Given that they know how "death to America" is interpreted, why do you think they continue with "death to America"?
In your view, is the United States deliberately targeting Iranian civilians?
Do you deny that Iran has been directing and supporting Hezbollah?
Do you deny that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization?
By who? The Iranian leadership? Are we supposing that they go in public, make a definitive statement of what 'Death to America' means, and every Iranian citizen knows to not take that statement seriously, and instead chant what they really mean. Which is to wish death on every American man woman and child, because Iranians are just subhuman and beastial like that and revel in suffering and death?
But the again, why would I bother quote, answer or link anything? None of the anti-Iran hysteria does so. Post after post. Kind of crazy.
In fact nigh all of those posts are just a routine list of arbitrary accusations and arbitrary benchmarks. Why would Iran funding Hezbollah be a reason to not like Iran? Funding proxies that can be called terrorists is practically an American geopolitical hobby. Is it OK to cause suffering, chaos and death to achieve your political goals so long as you are not called Hezbollah?
No. But I think that US officials have shown a great lack of care towards civilian deaths. Including Hegseth defunding the division focused on reducing civilian harm. And how they handled the school bombing doesn't inspire confidence. So yeah, I think if we allow all parties in the conflict some wiggle room regarding collateral damage, I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be mad against.
Listen, I'm not on trial here 'denying' things and you're not an authority on facts and knowledge. I'm sure Iran funds them along with a host of other groups. Why is funding proxies invalid when Iran does it, but not America or Israel?
If we apply the label fairly then I think they look like incompetent amateurs compared to Israel. As demonstrated in the footage of Gaza.
Pretty much, yes.
I'm not sure about Iranians in general, but Iranian leadership has consistently, chronically, and aggressively attacked Israeli civilians over the years. They've demonstrated what they mean by "Death to Israel."
If all they want is a change of government in Israel, why have they consistently, chronically, and aggressively attacked Israeli civilians?
It depends what you mean by "civilians." Israel has specifically targeted Iranian nuclear scientists who were reasonably believed to be part of Iran's nuclear program but who were not actually members of the Iranian military. In Gaza, Israel has unavoidably killed various civilians, but of course that's what happens when militants hide in civilian areas. You don't get immunity by ducking into a hospital or a mosque.
That being said, it doesn't really matter. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Israel has been pursuing a "Death to Gaza" policy and, as you claim "they [Iran's leadership] wish for the same thing to happen to Israel as has happened to Gaza." That's a very reasonable basis to believe that there is a great deal of risk from Iran possessing nuclear weapons. (Note that "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" have been Iranian slogans almost since the very beginning of the current regime in the 1970s.)
I'm not sure what your point is here. You seem to be denying that Iran exports terrorism.
It doesn't require any expertise to demonstrate that you are wrong. You don't seem to deny that Iran supports and directs Hezbollah or that Hezbollah regularly engages in terrorist activity. All you do is attempt to deflect from this reality with whataboutism. You are wrong there as well, but it doesn't change the fact that you are wrong about Iran exporting terrorism.
The bottom line is that Iran's leadership has shown through their actions what its long-standing "Death to Israel" policy means in practice and it's reasonable to infer that Iran's leadership means basically the same thing with its "Death to America" policy.
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Yeah we all know what “Death to America” means but the second Iran wants to mobilize American sympathy there’s a complicated explanation about how those words don’t mean what they appear to mean.
One imagines I would not get such sympathy if I were to say, “Death to hanikrummihundursvin”
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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.
Mao, however, repeatedly talked about how awesome a nuclear war would be- because China could absorb casualties and the west wouldn't, it meant communism would triumph. Didn't happen.
Mao also did the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, which are a lot crazier than anything the Iranian mullahs have done.
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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.
Of course claiming that a someone said something in private is completely unfalsifiable, but as a chinese, I can tell you that if you ask any chinese they would say you're out of your mind.
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What's your evidence for this? I mean, if you are "sure" that Xi says, in substance, "death to America" in private, there must be some evidence, right?
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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.
Without even claiming any particular expertise in the conflict, doesn't Lashkar-e-Taiba claim a number of attacks that resemble those of Hamas or its associates? The 2008 Mumbai attacks killed 175 people and had a movie made about it I've heard of in the West (Hotel Mumbai, 2018), and the 2025 attack in Pahalgam was the trigger for the most recent direct India-Pakistan conflict. Those are probably the two most notable incidents, but there's not a shortage of others, or other proxies.
I'm less familiar with the details, but wouldn't be surprised if India has similar proxies, but I can't think of any offhand.
I don't know about the situation, but I would definitely say that:
(1) If Pakistan's leadership regularly chants "death to India" and attacks Indian civilians through proxies, India would be totally justified in perceiving a serious risk to India from Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons;
(2) Even without the "death to India" chants, the same holds.
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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.
Iran exports less terrorism than the USA (probably) or the USSR (definitely) did during the Cold War. Unless you think that Israelis count for more than, say, Londoners, which I suppose the American establishment does. Both superpowers funded the IRA, although I suppose the involvement of Rep Peter King (IRA-NY) doesn't technically make the IRA an official US client group. Empirically, being a state sponsor of terrorism is not strongly correlated with being a country that can't be trusted with nuclear weapons under MAD.
Not for a lack of trying. If Iran had the resources of a peer-level superpower during the Cold War they'd definitely have tried to export their proxy model worldwide, not just in their local neighborhood.
It isn't Iran's model. It was first set out a written policy by the Kennedy-era CIA (the "plausible deniability" memo which would later be made public by the Church Committee) and had already been in use by the USSR since the late 1950's.
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I'm pretty sure it's not naivete or anti-American sentiment but rather an intense burning hatred for Jewish people and the resulting desire to support just about any country which is anti-Israel, even if (especially if) it increases the likelihood of nuclear war. Edit: My evidence for this is that there seems to be a big overlap between (1) posters who consistently side against Israel no matter what; and (2) posters who argue that a nuclear-armed Iran isn't a serious threat.
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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.
Or having another member of technical staff go rogue like this guy did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan
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This is called 'tuesday' and so far, no nuclear war. Seriously, Pakistan has a military coup every few years. It has subsaharan Africa level stability.
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I don't think this is true - ever heard of the Samson option? I'd trust the Iranians with a nuke far more than Israel.
Samson is a defensive stance, Iran is an aggressive nation with offensive interests that present existential threats to its neighbor as well as more mundane severe threats.
Fundamentally Iran is a nation that is running around punching people in the face. Who is more problematic, the guy who can punch back hard, or the guy punching people in the face?
lol, lmao
I'm surprised, I thought you would have kept up with news from the Middle East if you're going to talk about it with that level of confidence. This may come as a shock, but Israel is currently invading Lebanon, deploying white phosphorus on civilians, demolishing homes, blowing up hospitals and now moving settlers in to build houses on their newly acquired living space. They are in fact punching people in the face, right now! They have been punching people in the face for several years, and they launched the first strike on Iran.
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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?
Even after you've decapitated half of their leadership, they're still acting more rationally than either the US or Israel, so quite a lot, actually.
Please define "acting more rationally"
What have they done that you think marks them as "more rational"? What specifically is it about of the US, Israel, and the Gulf States recent dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IRGC that you view as "irrational"?
"Acting proportionally to an aggression" for a start.
The bombing campaign in itself far exceeds anything Iran has done against US or Israel, and threatening to bomb their civilian infrastructure was psychotic.
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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.
If its so clear Iran wants nukes (I agree). Why do none of the countries who, allegedly are parties to nonproliferation agreements, except the US do jack shit about it?
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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.
All the sources I have seen say the opposite - the negotiations leading up to military action was basically the US begging Iran to just give up on the nukes and Iran saying, "Nope, I'd rather die."
Laurence Norman, WSJ reporter in Germany, says, "My understanding comes from non-U.S. officials close to the talks as well as what Washington has said. This is what we have from 3 people."
I don't know why there are two such diametrically opposed narratives. I don't think there is any reason to believe the WSJ, which tends to be center left in the US, would try to run propaganda for Trump. I don't know what reason Oman might have to lie, except perhaps to increase their importance by making it sound like negotiations were going well.
Given Iran's past behavior regarding nuclear enrichment, I tend to believe the WSJ story as it is more in line with their past and present actions.
They agreed to 3.67% enrichment and then the US ripped it up; thus, ask for more next time. If you look at a graph of SWUs (ie effort/time input) versus enrichment percentage, it's not that huge a leap; the first few percentage points of enrichment are the hardest.
No, they didn't. The US offered to supply enriched uranium to Iran that is suitable for civilian use, a situaon similar to the UAE and Korea (two other nations that for various reasons have forfeited their ability to enrich fuel but still employ civilian nuclear programs). Iran rejected this - they want to be able to enrich their own.
Oman said, "Zero accumulation" which might be a trick of language. There is 0 accumulation if it all goes back into centrifuges. According to three other sources Iran had a 10 year nuclear enrichment plan which included:
Everything keeps coming back to the idea that Iran completely misread how serious Washington is being when they say, "No Nuclear Enrichment."
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If they just wanted to get out of the sanctions surely they could have at any point just said "hey, actually we would like to be more like Saudi Arabia, we will stop funding proxies and be chill" and any of the previous presidents would have tripped over themselves to get this deal.
Past precedent suggests that unilateral disarmament ends in your regime winding up like that of Gaddafi, not Saudi Arabia.
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Which shows that they value having proxies over having nuclear weapons. Ultimately, trying to get nukes has been more trouble than it's worth for the Iranians; Israel can't invade them, the US pre-Trump wasn't interested, and it just led to a whole bunch of crippling sanctions. Khameini issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons which, presumably, meant something in a very fundamentalist society.
The sanctions surely would have come about in response to the proxy funding in some non-nuclear counterfactual. Maybe lesser sanctions. At the end of the day the idea that Iran would have been satisfied with being a normal country that gets rich with its combination of obviously smart population and natural resources is complicated by the fact that this option was always on the table and they turned it down. The regime has ambitions in the region, and lofty ones. And once you have lofty ambitions counter to a nuclear power's wishes then you need nukes or you fail somewhere in the escalation chain above where sanctions are involved. Needing to at least be able to threaten to have nukes is a a necessary component of any plan to accomplish their regional objectives, no way around it.
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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.
I'm not a supporter of nuclear power but this is actually extremely easy to answer - oil does not replenish itself on a timescale relevant to human life. If I have a gigantic pile of savings but no income, it would actually make a lot of sense for me to try and find a way to support myself before that gigantic pile of savings runs out.
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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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