domain:savenshine.com
Yeah, the lesson from this whole thing is not so much "have nukes at all costs" as "if you're gonna fight a war , uncoordinated vassal swarm is a bad tactic because the AI will get defeated in detail". The second lesson for those who object is "swinging on someone a few times to save face is consenting to a war, prepare accordingly".
Iran simply miscalculated the strength and wisdom of its proxies. If anything, this is an argument for a durable conventional deterrent. North Korea probably wouldn't find itself in this situation, even without nukes.
quiet_NaN
16hr ago
People exclaiming loudly about how dangerous this is while also campaigning for increasing escalation in Ukraine against an actual nuclear adversary are not serious people.
I see few people arguing that NATO should enter a shooting war with Russia. Even providing air defense coverage (which would involve NATO shooting at Russian planes) is not in the overton window. Providing conventional military aid to a proxy has long been established as an acceptable cold war conduct with low risk of nuclear escalation.
I'm highly against more foreign intervention but this seems fine to me. A nuclear Iran seems to be very bad in very obvious ways.
I agree that a nuclear Iran seems bad, but the question is if US airstrikes will indefinitely delay the Iran acquiring nukes. If Iran acquiring nukes eventually is a forgone conclusion, then these attacks might be net negative in that they make it much more likely that Iran will not stick to MAD.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
16hr ago
Democratic party elites are strongly pro-Islam and see Isreal as creation of western imperialism, hense the current panic.
Republicans are generally anti-islam and see the Isrealis as natural allies who won thier war of independence fair and square.
quiet_NaN
16hr ago
This. The question is simply if it is better to delay their bomb by a few years at the cost of further antagonizing them.
Most nuclear powers have paid a very low blood toll for their nuclear weapons program. (Arguably, the US paid a tremendous indirect toll, as all the resources they earmarked for the Manhattan project would otherwise have gone into mundane military equipment which would have saved the lives of their soldiers, which is doubtlessly one reason why the pressure to use the bomb was so high. But emotionally, this is not equivalent to the Axis having assassinated Oppenheimer and a dozen of his colleagues and having selectively bombed Los Alamos.)
Not so the Iranians, when they finally hold the bombs in their hands they will have paid dearly with the lives of their best and brightest as well as hundreds of workers and years of sanctions. Simply going the North Korea route of MAD, announcing that their days of getting bombed are now over, and thank all the martyrs for securing the peace of Iran might not play well with their stakeholders, who have been raised on the promise of driving the Jews back into the sea. (Of course, it could also be that they plan to nuke Tel Aviv the minute they have a bomb, consequences be damned, and that this was the plan since the 80s, in which case antagonizing them further would not matter.)
From a tactical perspective, Iranian nuclear missiles will be extremely fragile. You can put your centrifuges in a deep mine to recover them after they get bombed, but there is no way to have your ballistic missile launch-ready and still have it launch-ready after its silo gets hit by a conventional bunker-buster. I think in wargaming, threatening your enemies nuclear missiles, so that they either have to use them or lose them is how conventional wars go nuclear.
A lot of nuclear powers do not really have to worry about someone taking out their retaliatory capabilities. The USSR had ICBM silos a thousand kilometers within their airspace, and nuclear missile subs which would have been hard to take out. They certainly had satellite surveillance to detect US mass launches.
Now consider Iran with a few nuclear silos. They know that the West is willing to bomb them to destroy their nukes. They also know that Israel can violate their airspace with impunity. (Presumably, Israel would first knock out their radars during a normal attack, which would give them some advance warnings, but how confident are they that they can see the latest US stealth bombers on their radar? And given that Western intelligence was able to infect their centrifuge control system with malware once, how confident are they that their radar systems are clean?) They know that Israel has invested a ton in missile defense and would probably gamble on being able to shoot down a lone surviving ballistic missile or two.
This means that they will be on a hair trigger. The US and Israel will have no credible way that they are willing to engage in MAD with Iran instead of trying to take them out with a first strike. Any time an animal gets into a transformer and electrocutes itself, cutting power to a radar station, there is a decent chance that whoever is in charge will decide that this means that Israel is finally going for their nukes and launch.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
16hr ago
This is not an argument for the inevitability of a nuclear Islamic Republic, it is an argument to expand the target list.
2rafa
16hr ago
undeclared
This word is doing a lot here. Declaration doesn’t really mean anything; it made sense for Pakistan for obvious geopolitical reasons, and every single nuclear state is aware of Israel’s nuclear capability. They could ‘declare’ it tomorrow and nothing would change, none of the major nuclear powers accept or are fully truthful around any international inspections or the full extent of their capability for standard secrecy reasons.
Botond173
16hr ago
There was indeed naive optimism throughout the non-Soviet member states of the collapsing Eastern bloc as well in 1989-91. What devisively killed it (besides economic collapse) was the Gulf War and the bungled Soviet intervention against separatists in the Baltics.
2rafa
16hr ago
People have been saying this since the late 1980s. The IRGC and mullahs’ grip on power is too strong. There is a fed up secular elite but their casualty tolerance is extremely low and as long as they can take their money in and out and vacation in the many countries where they can drink/fuck/etc (and they largely can) they won’t be a threat. The regime essentially banned dog ownership a few weeks ago just because it started trending on their social media and some scholars consider it un-Islamic; not the behavior of a regime desperately accepting some liberalization. The same happened after the hijab protests, they didn’t give an inch even if enforcement remains somewhat lax in Tehran (which it was before too). In the 1990s (the last major liberal turn) they assassinated a bunch of people effectively openly and then even semi-admitted it (politicians, businessmen, authors, journalists, public intellectuals) until the PM backed out of all his promises.
Botond173
16hr ago
I think normies used to believe in 3 myths that all crumbled since 2008:
- there'll be no more inflation
- credit will remain cheap
- international trade will always remain free
All of these provided an illusion of everlasting modest welfare.
In addition to just Iranian oil, I think something like 80% of all traffic through the straight is to Asian markets. I doubt the Iranians will mine the straight because of the likelihood is will harm non-targeted traffic, but if their capability in the straight or their significant assets there (the port there controls the overwhelming vast majority of trade in and out of Iran) are targeted I could see them doing it anyway.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
16hr ago
Iran was already in violation of the treaty. IAEA report to this effect is what prompted the Isreali air campaign in the first place.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
16hr ago
This is the first time I have heard "Jews did this" as the reason behind the Kennedy assassination.
Jiro
16hr ago
How could that happen without massive disparate impact lawsuits? (Unless they're not really similarly situated--different cities, different professions chosen, etc.)
2rafa
16hr ago
I find it very hard to believe that the consequence of a not-even-third-tier power nuking Paris would be Gaddafi being allowed to stay in power.
That’s the kind of hypothetical reserved for a Russia/China/USA level MAD situation where someone fires first and you hope against hope that cooler heads prevail and the attacked party ‘settles’ for a big payoff and apology (but still very unlikely).
A minor nuclear power firing a nuke like that would just result in absolute extermination for Gaddafi, because it’s not like the Chinese or Russians were going to nuke London or Washington in retaliation for an attack on Tripoli.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
16hr ago
Ironic, given that you got filtered (before being fished out)...
AnonymousActuary
16hr ago
Tbh the distinction between forces attacking and just supplying other forces that attack is somewhat lost on me, but a cursory reading of cold war era conflicts (Vietnam, Afghanistan etc) clearly indicates states consider it to be very different.
BurdensomeCount
—Your em dash is showing...
16hr ago
Can't believe I catch strays even when I do literally nothing wrong...
I don't think they'll directly attack US assets in the area, but I do think they'll close the straight of Hormuz for any European or American traffic.
This is less devastating than people think because Iranian oil flows to China, Japan, India and elsewhere would continue and even Europe is less reliant on Gulf oil than it previous was (and the shortfall could be made up).
The real impact would only happen by closing off the strait (by mining it, probably), which would send the price skyrocketing and which would infuriate China.
AnonymousActuary
16hr ago
Citation needed
Botond173
16hr ago
LOL...is this what you unironically associate late-stage capitalism and existing cyberpunk conditions with? "good conditions, decent income, nice job"? Do you think this is the lived experience of South Korean normies, for example? People who cannot even reproduce themselves?
"mostly functioning nations"
I meant "mostly well-functioning Asian nation". English isn't my mother tongue. Either way, I think Vietnam, as unified through force of arms, represents an overall outcome that is clearly preferable to both those of all other former COMECON member states and that of the partitioned Korean nation.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
16hr ago
Jesus Christ. It's one thing to observe that a lot of QALY and DALY improvements come from "clean water, vaccines and antibiotics" and then entirely another to imply that additional interventions are zero or negative expected value.
Do you think that our (now quite successful) treatments of childhood leukemia are as ineffectual as extending the unhealthy lifespans of the very elderly?
Crowstep
17hr ago
Can you give examples of these institutions and how they censored information?
Because every developed country (and most undeveloped ones) used COVID vaccines and demonstrated their effectiveness. Is the entire planet in on this conspiracy?
WhateverHappenedToNorman
17hr ago
Further justifying BurdensomeCount's question! Sorry for the misunderstanding.
The consequence of Gaddafi nuking Paris is "no more Gaddafi", but also no more Paris. The consequence of Gaddafi being able to nuke Paris if the alternative is going to be "no more Gaddafi" anyway is quite a different matter.
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