[alephnerd]

We don't need a second North Korea. Nor do we want to normalize every country starting a nuclear program.

Air strikes do not constitute boots on the ground, and the rules based norms around "you break it, you own it" ended with the last flight from Kabul. Most likely, we will conduct bombing raids, but take no part in nation building.

Ironically, South Korea wanted to do this to North Korea in 2003 (edit: 1993-94), but the Bush (edit: Clinton) administration pushed back because they were concentrating on Iraq and Afghanistan (edit: Yugoslavia).

Edit 1:

Nuclear weapons ALONE do not act as a deterrent anymore. Most nuclear countries have second/third strike capabilities and nuclear triad capabilities.

This is something that Iran has been working on for decades with a fairly robust ballistics and cruise missile program, and attempts at building a domestic nuclear submarine program.

More critically, just about every regional power in the Middle East has been investing in similar capabilities in case an Iran breakout happens. Going from 1 additonal country with nuclear weapons to 3-4 leads to a cascading domino effect (a nuclear Iran means a nuclear Saudi means a nuclear Turkiye means a nuclear Egypt...)

Edit 2:

For the downvoters - a country who's leadership explicitly chants "مرگ بر آمریکا" (Death to America) will unsurprisingly be viewed as a threat. Even our large rivals China or Russia do not normalize that kind of rhetoric.

[yongjik]

> Ironically, South Korea wanted to do this to North Korea in 2003

Where did you get that info? Makes no sense. South Korea has been consistently against starting another war with NK for at least 30 years or so, and besides, in 2003 South Korea was ruled by Kim Dae-Jung, famous for he's staunch support of improving relations with North Korea (he got a Nobel prize for that), and then Roh Moo-Hyun, from the same party and largely following Kim's foreign policy.

Thanks to them we had no wars, and of course now we have some young whippersnappers complaining about their "pro-NK" policies, saying we could have totally bombed NK, starting a war, and burning the peninsula to the ground, but at least North Korea won't have nukes today!

[alephnerd]

This was during the 2002-03 standoff during which the Yeongpyeong crisis occured.

It was after the Six Party Talks started in Aug 2003 that tensions started cooling down, before North Korea stunned the world in 2006.

Edit: though now that I think about it, I might be confusing this incident with the 1993-94 incident.

[netsharc]

Re: Death to America.

Why don't you go die!

I don't mean it literally, read: https://www.mypersiancorner.com/death-to-america-explained-o...

Isn't it great when people take things out of context? In this case the context that wishing death is quite common in Iranian expressions of frustrations?

[_heimdall]

I understand that the phrase is intended to call for the end of the US government, not the end of the US people.

That even better supports my point though. Diplomacy is between two governments, not one government and the population of another government. Iran has practiced diplomacy at times, but calling for the end of the US government wouldn't exactly fit well in the implied reality of Iran having done everything they could diplomatically.

[goatlover]

While I understand not wanting countries like North Korea and Iran having nukes, it does protect them from invasion. We've seen what happened after Ukraine gave up their nukes. Less we forget, the Neocons of the Bush era wanted to remake the entire Middle East, not just Iraq and Afghanistan.

[klipt]

> nukes ... protect them from invasion

Israel has nukes and Hamas still invaded them.

Perhaps nukes protect you from invasion by rational actors, but I don't think they work on zealots.

[jjk166]

And yet Israel does not denuclearize.

I certainly hope Iran's adversaries are rational actors.

[alephnerd]

Nukes alone do not prevent invasions.

You need to have delivery mechanisms like medium/long range ballistic missiles and second strike capabilities like SLCMs.

[cempaka]

Iran has been amply demonstrating their missile capabilities on the city of Tel Aviv for the past week.

[pfannkuchen]

Which country with nukes has been invaded?

[fzeroracer]

The actions of the US and Israel are only proving an unfortunate trend of reality: The only deterrence against invasion from other countries is nuclear deterrence. We had a comprehensive deal with Iran to limit their nuclear program which Trump tore up in 2017 and which Israel is taking advantage of today.