[kcplate]

I get it, you don't trust them. I am skeptical of the motives of all governments regardless of who sits in power. Frankly, none are truly benevolent or honest as far as I am concerned.

But that is a whole separate topic from speaking to the hypothetical “we should have tried a blockade first”. Whether you believe the justification or not there is a honesty to the timing, immediacy, and level of violence of the action here. When you couple that with some indisputable facts here—we know that for nearly five decades Iran has advocated genocide on Israel and the US as a matter of their state policy. We know that they have repeatedly acted when they could to this end. We know they were seeking nuclear weapons. We know that active diplomacy was going on and then it turned on a dime suddenly to military action.

It seems to me that the level of military violence inflicted on Iran with such a short switch from diplomatic talks was consistent with the belief by someone that they were danger close to having a nuclear weapon. You can be dishonest and corrupt, but still see and act on immediate threats.