Maybe this is a bit glib, but it's because attacking Iran (which everyone knew was a bad idea but which presumably seemed useful as a distraction) turned out to be a bad idea. So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Israel keeps actively going against US goals. The beginning of the conflict generally had both sides in general agreement. The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement, and now continues promoting conflict while the US admin is pushing hard for a peace deal is showing the cracks
> The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement
The plan was fucked from conception. Not having a strategy for safeguarding the Strait made virtually any strategy that required persisting after decapitation half baked.
The issue wasn't a lack of planning by the military it was a lack of commitment on the goals by the administration. If it was just a desert storm style campaign (hit them very hard over a month then leave without finishing off Saddam) then they should have left already when Iran offered to open the strait, and it could have been sold as a success.
If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now, which neither the president nor the public seems to have an appetite for and Iran knows that. So now it's mostly deadlocked on both the US demanding Iran lose face by giving up Uranium immediately, while Israel wants to keep up an air campaign to further neuter Irans combat capabilities to free up their own strategic goals against Hezbollah and Hamas. But neither options are properly aligned, especially with fanatics in IRGC taking over.
It's either a short air campaign or a war, but they can't seem to decide so we are left with an blockade.
> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes
then they never should have torn up the agreement that saw multiple third party inspectors having feet on the ground and leaving in place tamper resistant / tamper revealing air filters and spectrometer instrumentation.
Instead a path has been taken that has upped the HEU game and hardened the core guard and fanatics.
When did Iran offer this? (One problem with a decapitation strike is you no longer have a single party to negotiate with.)
> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now
It's genuinely unclear if America has the military power to project into Iran to the degree a ground invasion would require. (Like, short of carpet bombing the country's infrastructure and industry out of existence.)
Missiles, drones and space-based surveillance have tilted the balance in favour of defenders, at least on the ground. American firepower can constrain Iran to within its airspace and maritime borders. But even if it made sense to, it's questionable whether we can influence much within them.
Trump complicated things by demanding the uranium immediately and Israel much more complicated things by overreacting to Lebanon striking Israel when the blockade started (Iran likely told Hezbollah to hit Israel as a negotiation gambit). This means to sign a deal Iran now had to both embarrass themselves by giving up uranium and also show that IRGC abandons their partners (Hezbollah, Hamas) which will ruin their whole militia proxy war ambitions they’ve been spending millions on since the Lebanon civil war.
I personally believe Iran was willing to compromise on the uranium in exchange for the US totally dropping sanctions. It is Israel being hyper aggressive that is ruining things by trying to retake southern Lebanon (which they controlled until 2000) and pushing US to resume the air campaign… while now also spying on US negotiators.
Iran opened the strait as a gesture after the Lebanon ceasefire was announced. Trump then immediately announced "blockade stays" in some truth social rant, so they reclosed it within a day.
Don't forget the part where the Lebanon ceasefire was announced, Israel decided to continue its bombing and occupation campaign and broke the ceasefire, then Trump immediately announced the blockade stays in that TS rant.
Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of how much influence Israel has over US foreign policy. For Netanyahu, the propaganda that he manipulated Trump into waging a war against Iran boosts his political image with some Israelis. (And it is near election season in Israel).
It's simpler than this: Israel benefits from Iran needing to spend large amounts of money on its own infrastructure and civilian needs, rather than on military development. Getting a larger country (the US) to create those money sinks (in the form of a broadly unserious conflict) achieves that outcome.
(The irony being that this is Iran's strategy w/r/t Hormuz as well.)
Netanyahu avoids domestic issues and stays in power through the continuation of the conflict. Israel continues to receive US money and weapons, and can continue to run a wartime economy, which has been lucrative for many.
It’s not a win for Israel. It’s a win for him. The stronger Iran is, the more you need him.
Netanyahu is Trump like - his core constituency is whack job Americans and the Israelis whom they firehose money at.
The commentators and idiots running the government miss the forest for the trees. Iran is radically stronger than they were, even with the destruction rained down. The entire American military supremacy story is toast. The strategy of them and North Korea with respect to ballistic missiles and drones works.
It’s Vietnam with missiles and drone. The US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, “never lost a battle”, yet got whooped.
I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in..
So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc).
The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny.
IRGC specifically was put in place to protect the regime and it only responds to the Supreme Leader. Neither the president or the parliament control it.
The mosaic system was started few years back after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani (though it possibly dates further, I can't confirm this).
The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war. Their motto is "Every day in Ashura, every land is Karbala".
The entire Shia sect is basically an apocalyptic religious movement. Has been since the start when Ali, the first Imam and fourth Caliph for the Sunnis, was assassinated, his sons following him, only for the assassination mastermind to usurp his Caliphate. Combine that with the millenarianism of the Safavids in the 15th and 16th centuries.
There is a potential for bias among Iranian converts to Christianity, but for those whose stories I've listened to, the common answer is yes, there is an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran.
> Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran?
It's more of a Jihad/Martyrdom ideology that's driving them.
> Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?
That's a rather different issue, and luckily one that at least causes a lot less problems in practice. Sam Harris has some decent material on why this is(a lot of it comes down to important differences in doctrine).
Why do people buy this bs is beyond me. Let's review actual warfare and its requirements.
Logistics. You can mosaic your heart out but you need to provide arms, food, water, electricity, medicines, parts, fuels ... for each of these high level cells. None of that is "distributed" or "independent" or quite frankly given the kleptocracy that is IRI is even given. All that the so called mosaic has achieved is that when the leadership cadre was killed this did not affect a loss of operational readiness as each high level cell had independent command authority. Read that again: operational readiness.
US military could trivially end this shit show. The question is why is this strange war being dragged on like this. For example, we are told "they have dug out the entrances to the missile cities". Now besides the fact that most of those videos of the missile cities scream CGI, even assuming they do exists, this nation is supposed to have a fucking "space force" and was reading license plates back during cold war from outer space. Are we to believe Centcom is incapable of burying those entraces yet again?
The "who would have thunk it!" b.s. about the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, everybody and their mommy knew this was a strong possibility. Equally, most knew if US used its bases in the area the host nations would be targeted. I am convinced part of this shit show is to make Arabs sweat. US "provokes" IRGC and some parts of Arab infrastructure is smoked. "They need to all agree to be on board with Abraham Accords" said the Orange front man, the other day.
The "we now toll Strait of Hormuz". Aha. Let's see: we live in a planet where great powers started and fought world wars to decide exactly this sort of matter: who controls what parts. Are we to assume that the funky IRI regime and the IRGC have now achieved what world powers achieved after sacrificing tens of millions of casualties with just some stupid surface to surface missile batteries in northern shores of the Persian Gulf? Bullocks, as they say in the isle of perfidy.
From where I sit, US removed all obstacles for the succession of Khamenei's "gay" son. The other day one of these cheeky IRI embassy twitter accounts (who have a pretty good propaganda chops these days) were self congratulating since the Orange frontman who used to m.c. "pro wrestling matches" said "I'd be honored to meet him!". Will he bring a cake in the shape of a 'Pink' Dildo? One wonders.
If the United States permits IRI to actually have a control over the well being of the entire global economy, then folks, you must realize this is all a plan that we are not privy to. There is no way, none whatsoever, in any reasonable reality, where a middle tier nearly bankrupt, socialy unstable, and isolated theocracy can have the lever to dictate terms to Superpowers armed with atomic weapons.
IRI dictating terms to whoever needs the spice to flow from the Persian Gulf -- and that includes China, India, Japan, S. Korea, EU ... -- without the great powers saying 'no you dont' simply does not compute in any rational universe.
As to Karbala and Ashura. Well, 2023 came by and then "ready to die" martyrs of the fabled "Shia" weren't exactly lining up to fight Israel. Also, I can not think of any slogan that does more to cheapen the martyrdom of Hussein son of 'Ali than to claim that anywhere, anytime and anyone is equivalent to where, when, and who of the actual Karbala.
p.s. US was already worried in 70s about the Shah of Iran controlling the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons they got rid of him, as a matter of fact.
Read this short story that was published in 1976 in New York magazine. This was the psyops back then ! that was used to scare the Gulf Arabs to accept US bases. It's a fun read. The Shah takes over the Persian Gulf and controls the Strait of Hormuz. Atom bombs are involved ...
> The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.
Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.
The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.
> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.
Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.
Ngl, anyone arguing for a ground invasion of Iran will have a hard time convincing US population. I get that president's war powers are pretty expansive, but everything has limits.
> They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.
That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.
> they can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force
I'm genuinely sceptical of this. If America literally invaded Iran, there is a good chance Chinese production comes to back them up. At that point we're fighting with a long logistics chain on someone else's territory (giving them advantages of knowing the land, having local sympathies and having a greater reason to fight) while getting pelted by asymmetric-warfare tactics we can't meaningfully reciprocate.
> unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point
Why? Just remove their ability to destroy Israel. Keep taking out their nuclear programme from time to time and have the Congress ratify the JCPOA in case they come back to the table.
Oman doesn't seem to care, Qatar capitulated quickly, the UAE is a walking corpse, Kuwait is as well until they kick the 5th fleet out, Iraq is already majority Shia, Saudi Arabia doesn't seem to care much.
It is not irreplaceable - you can avoid it as a shipping route and take a longer route. It's just more costly because it is a long route. Which means higher oil prices, which is universally unpopular everywhere with the citizens. (In oil-importing economies, oil prices have a rippling effect as any increase in oil prices increases the transportation cost of goods there by resulting in price increases of all such goods).
more like weaker iran than ever, now that the central command are gone, no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC.
> no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC
One could argue a junta makes for a stronger Iran than the previous gerontocratic autocracy. Of course, we don't know. And I think it's silly to say Iran is stronger today than it was at the start of the war. But relative to America? At least in the region, I'd say one could argue that sensibly.
It is stronger. The weapons capabilities only matter if people are willing to man them. The obvious interference in otherwise organic protests and the threats and the multiple bombings during negotiations united the people against outside threats. Without an enemy, they will fight each other as long as sanctions pressure is continued and internal conflicts are amplified.
Certain figures are gone but political and military organization appears mostly intact. Iran also emerged as potent enough to deliver stalemate to combined force of CENTCOM and Israel. Its standing certainly had improved next to the lows after decimation of its proxies and the fall of client regime in Syria.
The argument is interesting, because it happens to repeat administration's assertions. It also is interesting, because the argument itself attempts make peace with the idea that wiping out central command & leadership did not put US in a more favorable position in general.
I guess I will just point out that 'weaker than ever' is doing a lot of work here without being specific on what strength means here. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
It is quite ridiculous to watch though. There are ( well, were ) reasons as to why IC was very vocal about not doing what Trump admin's decided to do. And now they are looking to find a reason, any reason that can deflect the blame..
Why? No one likes a loser politician.. not even Trump's electorate. And it is hard to spin lost war AND higher gas prices AND higher inflation.
it's actually weaker than before, and these who left are the kind that power hungry with no class or protocols of the leadership(that died), bunch of power hungry, blood thirsty mid level leaders who understand that they cannot allow the regime to change, at all cost, they even forced the son of the previous leader to take the reign (which in reality just a public face). they are actually more brutal and the chances of change from within through the people of iran is even smaller than before by multiple orders of magnitude.
now, why the regime didn't collapse? 2 things, 1. mesh network so they don't need to have a central command 2. they know they will be executed if they lose the grip on power.
it's actually weaker but more brutal now than ever, against their own people and against the outsider threats. like a cornered rats with no escape so they decided a fight to death.
<< 1. mesh network so they don't need to have a central command 2. they know they will be executed if they lose the grip on power.
<< more brutal now than ever,
So... they now have distributed command and are more willing to employ force. Note that all of that was known before the attack so the attack on Iran was a spectacular gamble, which failed. Worse, it undermined strategic interests of US.
Does that actually strike as weaker? It does not sound that way to me.
edit: Oh, somehow I forgot: Iran did not actually carry out some of their bigger threats ( internet cables and so on ). So, yeah, Iran may be weaker in terms of -- hmm, whats the proper phrase here -- conventional war units, but it now has outsized leverage compared to what it had before the attack AND, which it makes it worse even from pure propaganda perspective, a moral claim for self-defense.
considering Trump's personality, i don't think this is a win, his followers certainly wouldn't like that as well. I'm pretty sure this idea isn't even part of their stream of thoughts that trump is a puppet of bibi and this whole war was conducted following the command from Netanyahu.
Because now the manifestation of all this crap has reached a nuclear stage of undeniability.
It has literally been simmering for a long time and now it finally comes out. Taking it out on Israel is not wrong and that's not to say that they (the Israeli government) hold the sole responsibility for this. The US had a say in this as well. But now the US is questioning the benefits of this complete and total asshattery and rightly so. Better late than never I suppose.
Israel definitely wanted us to do this, but they've been trying to sell US presidents on this for decades without success. MBS and the Saudis also want this, but you rarely read about that in the news; likewise with the UAE and quite a few others who have even been running their own direct strikes on Iran.
The thing is, and I realize this is a rough climate to say this into: Jews have been the official scapegoats for the Middle East and Europe for what... 1500 years now? That doesn't just go away, and the political expediency of Trump covering his ass and the ass of his Saudi/UAE sources of billions (through Jared, Ivanka, Eric, etc) can't be thrown under the bus to do it.
Meanwhile Israel is being run by a universally loathed man who can't shut up, so it's just easier to pretend that's it all their fault.
While it is true that the Saudis are hostile to Iran and do want Iran's power to be curtailed, they were never in favour of the current war because they knew the plan was ill-thought and suicidal for it, as they knew how Iran would respond (and how ill-prepared they and the American military was to defend them). Iran's foreign policy with its Arab neighbours is based on the blunt but simple principle - "Peace for all. Prosperity for all." Implied in it is that if any of the Arab neighbours upset the public peace in Iran and / or attacked its economy, it would retaliate to ensure they too wouldn't have any peace or prosperity. And that's exactly how it played out ...
They literally bombed Iran themselves in the midst of a ceasefire, they also are on record pushing to finish Iran off. It just doesn’t get as much coverage as anything with Israel in the headline.
The Saudis have only done "tit for tat" bombing, and are especially cautious to ensure that there is no escalation. Yes, they would prefer if this war could curtail Iran's power but they don't want it at the cost of their economy. Saudi Arabia Built a Private De-Escalation Track With Iran. - https://houseofsaud.com/saudi-helsinki-bilateral-iran-de-esc... (The whole of the https://houseofsaud.com/ provides an interesting Saudi perspective on the war and their relationships with the US).
Seems like MSB has pushed for it together with kushner and netanyahu. As we know, kushner received billions of Saudi money for a fund, netanyahu literally stayed at in his house when visiting the US and slept in his bed, yet he somehow is the negotiator the US sends to negotiate with Iran?
It's Israel's immediate history (as in the last year or so) that's made it an easier scapegoat.
That and the Saud's, despite an appalling human rights record, are politically difficult to blame for anything (including Bin Laden), because of their (brilliant) petro politics - playing the Eastern bloc off against the West incredibly well.
Fighting over that patch is one of the older continuous activities of the species, and while anything is possible, I would never bet in favor of MENA peace.
Forcing the existence of a new jewish state has created, as expected, a permanent political fissure in the area. This is just dumb ideas piling up upon one another.
Or, because different factions in the regime are at odds with eachother - there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants, and who spearheaded the idiotic war with Iran, and there's the entire military, which thinks that this war is by far the dumbest thing they've been asked to do... This year.
Did this announcement come from the military side of things, or the MAGA side of things?
MAGA has split hard. it's now MIGA vs AF. With MIGA being mostly boomer evangelicals and AF being younger, either outright fuentes antisemites or just anti Zionists that lean right. There is a huge astroturfing campaign to make it seem like MAGA is unanimously pro netanyahu, but it's simply fake.
It's premature to say it has split. MAGA always had multiple factions, and Trump has historically been excellent at keeping them in line. (See: Arab Americans in Michigan voting for Trump.)
To the extent we're seeing any meanginful splits, it's in independents splitting from the GOP. Not MAGA splitting in any meangingful way. (Trump's recent primary wins show this.)
> So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.
Well, it is clear to see that this is Netanyahu's ploy, but the thing is that Trump constantly lies about this. "There are negotiations", but then the US bombs again. To me it seems as if Trump operates in a way that makes it impossible to have anything else but drop bombs onto Iran. In this way he resembles Putin, who tries to occupy more and more land belonging to Ukraine. Putin has no alternative to this either, similar to Trump. (Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it. I don't see how he can stop it, without having achieved officially stated goals of his genocidal invasion.)
Nah. There are always face-saving offramps... And examples like Saddam doing just fine after his failed invasion of Iran.
If the war ended tomorrow, and Russia withdrew from Ukraine, Putin would still be enjoying ~50% organic support among Russians.
Just like Trump has a ~35% approval floor of complete idiots standing behind him as he sends inflation and gas prices and cost of living through the roof...
Putin enjoys fairly wide actual support for generally developing the country over his tenure. Whether someone else would have done better is not the hypothetical people are engaging with.
The Romanovs got through the Russo-Japanese war just fine. It was WWI and the complete collapse of the country, and the revolution that ousted them (And then the provisional government refused to end the war, got couped by the Bolsheviks, who only then executed the Romanovs.)
I can't see any meaningful parallels between the current war and WWI. For one thing, people in Russia (as of today) aren't literally running out of bread.
How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.
Makes the MAGA military look incompetent. The US has a history of botched wars around the globe, most of which have little to do with Israel. If I'm drawing from data, then the Iran conflict is consistent with the post-war military movements of the US.
Now that the communists are no more, Israel is the next best scapegoat. The way I see it, Israel's current leaders are happy to be scapegoats because the war benefits Ben Gvir and a radicalized Likud. It allows them to consolidate domestic power and pursue aggressive foreign objectives under shadow of the Iran conflict.
I hope Netanyahu has thought this through. He has burned through 100 years of western guilt in the span of 3 years. To break even, Israel's military excursions must secure outsized outcomes, to the tune of decades of security. Because, I believe we are entering a couple of decades of bipartisan & unprecedented* anti-semitism.
* Figuratively speaking. Historically ofc, anti-semitism is pretty precedented.
> How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.
You don’t need to influence a nation, you only need to get one guy on board.
When you have ready access to the ego-driven and cognitively limited man in charge, either directly or through his sycophants, and that man has enormous executive authority to do mostly whatever he wants, this becomes very straightforward.
Israel has been looking for a sucker in the White House for 40 years, and they finally found one.
Ah yes, the nation's most influential sex-trafficker/pimp was a Mossad asset and the $100b budget CIA knew anything about it. They set up the world's most advanced domestic spying system, and the NSA did not flag anything.
You do realize that such conspiracy theories require all 3 of these things to be true ?
1. American elites are totally clueless
2. The CIA is hopelessly incompetent
3. Mossad has compromised every layer of the American military and elite civilian life
Israel obviously has a ton of influence on American elites and politicians. Just the AIPAC donations and the strong representation of Jews in American elite life is proof enough. You don't have to look much further.
It's the unsubstantiated conspiracy theories (often peddled as fact) that me think there is a certain hysteria going on. It's not anti-semitism per se. More so that otherwise respectable people lose all discernment towards unsubstantiated claims when those claims support their biases about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Rothschilds have supported Israel for over 140 years; the most recent example is Lord Jacob Rothschild, who appears in the Epstein files.
Those are the facts. I don’t think it necessarily follows that the CIA didn’t realize what was going on or that the American elite were clueless. Those are left as an exercise to the reader.
Right. That"s why Epstein wired millions of dollars to Russia, had a Russian bodyguard, gave away his estate to some Belorussian woman, and so on. Obviously, Mossad at work here!
Epstein was irate that he suffered consequences others didn't (I'm not saying he didn't do more than others). He was thoroughly red-pilling and making comments more about how he believed what he did should be okay.
And being so irate about such things, it's not unreasonable to think "Fuck my handlers (whoever they are, if they exist, Mossad or otherwise), they didn't protect me, so screw it".
Occam's razor and such, but it's also entirely possible that he could have been being blackmailed by the Russians while "working for" Israel - or for that matter, vice versa.
The US is currently waging a proxy war against Russia where they've managed to engineer something like 1,000,000 Russian casualties according to credible estimates [0]. Although obviously they're doing that for moral reasons since Russia launched an unprovoked war to maintain a sphere of influence around their borders which serious people in the US establishment have explained no country should be allowed to do.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the US has launched an unprovoked war on Iran because the Iranians were threatening the Israeli (and US for that matter) sphere of influence over the region, which obviously they are entitled to because god said so. The US is being entirely reasonable here and all serious people in the US establishment support or at most disagree with whether the mad scheme is a good idea.
Just saying, if the Russians are the ones who are running the influence operations in Washington they really should consider ... I dunno, sending younger girls, or whatever. Their money is doing unusually poorly for lobbying efforts.
And I want to add I don't even mind the hypocrisy or the evil all that much, I just wish I could find someone with a serious argument for how provoking the Russians makes long-term strategic sense. These policies are stupid, liable to get someone nuked sooner or later and just setting China up to have an easy time.
Please don't give credit for current Ukrainian advances to the Trumpenreich. The US intelligence apparatus was apparently even sharing NATO intelligence and information with Russia on Ukrainian positions. Once the EU excluded the US completely from this, Ukraine has made much more progress recently.
It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effected regime change were slaughtered months ago. So now it's just a scared populace hunkering in place while USA warships and jets dominate their country.
And the Iranians fire off the occasional drone swarm on UAE.
It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change. That’s a fantasy that Israel included in its pressure on the US, but which US intelligence deemed highly implausible.
There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.
Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.)
The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.)
The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state.
>It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change
They could have if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. The IRGC is heavily dependent on oil revenue for funding its oppressive apparatus; without it hundreds of thousands of militia would go without pay and eventually desert. For whatever reason Trump didn't want to do this; likely not for humanitarian reasons given his nature, but for some reason he seemed to really care what Turkey and Pakistan think, both of whom don't want to be flooded with refugees.
> if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure.
That would have worked. But it is still a stupid idea if you don't cripple and destroy Iran's military capability first as Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too, plunging the world into an economic depression because of the energy crisis it would cause - The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc...
> Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too
Iran probably couldn't have, not without being intercepted and having its launchers neutralised every time it fired. But Tehran would have kept on credibly threatening to, which would have meant America essentially taking on air defence responsibility for the entire Gulf.
> We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.
I see this repeateded a lot but it doesn't follow to me that the facility that was bombed in midnight hammer was created and begun operating after that agreement was cancelled. It seems clear to me that Iran never stopped using that facility.
It seems to me that Iran's goal is to develop a nuclear weapon and there isn't a piece of paper that will stop them. I don't really fault them, it's a very sane thing to do to secure your border a la North Korea.
I'm not sure there is a non-military way to influence Iran to not develop a nuclear weapon.
That facility was a nuclear research facility for civilian, military and medical use. Note that military doesn't mean weapons. Iran getting nuclear submarine would increase their threat level. In any case, Iran have a fatwa against developing nuclear bombs (a fatwa is a law edicted by a religious leader, and not respecting it would make you sinful and rebellious, and in a theocratic regime, often end in prison). The fatwa isn't reversed yet afaik, but the US killed the mufti who declared it, so I don't know how it applies.
But anybody saying Iran was working on a bomb is probably misinformed or lying imho.
There isn't a non-military, non bomb use for the amount of Uranium that Iran was enriching up to the levels that they were doing so.
All the things that you talked about do not require doing what Iran was doing. Meaning that... the only motivation left would be the 1 single thing that does require that much enrichment to those levels.
Hitting this from another angle, it doesn't make any strategic sense as for why Iran would sacrifice all that it is throwing away, just to get some medical research benefits. That would be a poor deal, and Iran isn't stupid.
You might be right on the regime change being fantasy but those things are not predictable and we don't know the details.
Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement, the agreement was time bound and not indefinite (and would have already expired anyways), and it enabled them to sell oil and raise a lot of money to fuel their wars, missile programs, nuclear programs and other ambitions.
> Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement...
No, actually it is you who is wrong. Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA. It is after US withdrew from the agreement that they pursued enrichment further.
Yup. "The U.S. certified in April 2017 and in July 2017 that Iran was complying with the deal. On 13 October 2017, President Trump announced that he would not make the certification required under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, accusing Iran of violating the spirit of the deal..." [1].
Wrong. That is not the question. It came to light later that Iran hid sites, activities and materials. The 2017 certification is not relevant. They were still violating it either in letter or in spirit, they had no intent of stopping the pursuit of nuclear weapons, and at the most charitable interpretation (and no way the Iranian regime deserves that) the agreement was time bound and would have expired already.
Why was Iran under sanctions in the first place? Sponsor of terrorism. Oppression of its own people. Messing with Yemen, Syria, Lebanon (and the list goes on). Only in Syria they helped Assad murder 100's of thousands of Syrians. The Yemen civil war. The murder and abuse of their own citizens.
Iran had an easy way of not getting sanctioned. We didn't need the JCPOA. What we needed is Iran to cease the activities for which it was getting sanctioned.
We had a "diplomatic solution for Iran" is total nonsense. Obama messed this up just like he totally messed up the entire middle east. Iran trained and supplied Hamas which led to Oct 7th. Iran trained and supplied Hezbollah. Iran developed and built their ballistic missile program to attack all their neighbors. With what money/resources? With the money Obama gave them in for cheating on this agreement. If you have western interests in mind than the Iranians are laughing at you for being a fool.
Since my other reply was flagged, and I'm past the edit window, and I learnt a little more about the nuance:
- Technically Iran was considered to be meeting the requirements of the JCPOA during the 2016-2018 period in reports issued at the time.
- Iran failed to declare all its sites and programs before entering the JCPOA. This is known now, after the fact.
- Technically some argue that because Iran participated in meetings and filed papers they met the PMD requirements which were the preliminary requirement for the JCPOA to take effect. The nuance here is whether they technically fulfilled the requirements despite lying and hiding and then "only" violated the NPT or whether they violated the PMD.
- That Iran hid sites, material and equipment came into light after the Mossad stole Iran's nuclear archive. This is fact and was confirmed by IAEA inspections despite Iran's attempts to prevent that.
- When the IAEA asked to inspect those sites Iran engaged in a cover up operation and delayed access. After the sites were inspected there was evidence of nuclear material made by human activities.
- That material discovered by IAEA was not farther enriched which the supporters of the agreement claim is evidence that Iran didn't enrich more material. In reality Iran lied and hid facilities and so despite the samples taken by the IAEA not finding evidence of more enrichment the basic fact is that Iran acted in bad faith and so we just don't know. Maybe they only hid sites, equipment, and nuclear material but did not pursue further enrichment during this period. Maybe they did in other sites.
- Officially Iran was never found to be in violation of the JCPOA.
- The JCPOA was set to expire in October 18, 2025 after which there would have been no restriction on Iran anyways. That's another part of the argument that this was a bad agreement.
While it’s difficult to say to what extent they were going beyond there agreement, it’s clear that they were. I’m not aware of any evidence that it was to the level of, “they’re continuing to make quick progress towards a bomb.” Which is what happened when the US decided to reneg.
There were another seven years to negotiate what’s next and real progress made from both sides trusting each other. That’s the type of momentum needed for further diplomacy (e.g. counteracting more bellicose members of the IRGC.) Instead, we got the opposite. And for what?
I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k.
You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath.
Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient.
> As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll.
Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days.
I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.
Yeah, the 30k number is hogwash, but HR NGOs and OSINT volunteers worked up 7k dead in protest over 50 days, including 200 police/military forces, and a maximum of 18k death if you count the fights against separatist/freedom fighter/terrorists (depending on who you are aligned with, choose the description you like more)
Hogwash? More like state-backed propaganda disseminated by so-called objective and professional media organizations in order to justify an offensive war against Iran; a war that has achieved virtually none of its stated aims.
I personally trust OSINT sources more than NGOs these days. I would wager that the security forces numbers are higher. I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.
isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?
Israeli newspaper quoting NYT article with sources within Israel intelligence confirms this:
> The Times reported that Barnea’s predecessor, Yossi Cohen, viewed regime change in Iran as unlikely and deemphasized the Mossad’s work on that project, instead working on ways to weaken the regime through sanctions and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists.
> But Barnea has adopted the opposite approach, directing the agency’s energies toward regime change over the past year
It was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc.
Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them.
So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.
> let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years
What. Like actually, what? Bronze Age geopolitics weren't peaceful. The Romans and Parthians made going after each other, including through proxy wars, a sport. We even get a Jewish client state to the Romans in Judea [1].
The Levant is a fertile stretch with maritime access directly to the west of where human civilisation was born; one could argue it's one of the first pieces of land that's been constantly fought over over the entirety of human history.
You must be joking re: peaceful before US and Europe. The first crusade was in 1099 for those who don't know the details. We had the Byzantine-Arab wars, Fatimid civil wars, Turkish invasions... Ofcourse we had the whole spread of Islam "by sword". Don't forget it was the Roman invasion of the region in 63 BCE that resulted in the mass murder and expulsion of Jewish people from Israel after the Bar Kokhba Revolt...
Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent.
Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...
So you're arguing the crusaders brought peace to the middle east?
This history is so vast I can't even begin to think about how to compare. But one thing that feels odd to me is how people think of the middle east as somehow separate/far from Europe when in fact it's basically the same neighborhood. The Greek and the Romans were there. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims from present day Bosnia moved to present day Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak
Don't forget that Christianity came from the middle east and ofcourse Islam.
The Ottoman Empire ruled vast swaths of present day Europe. Spain was under Muslim rule until 1492.
It's all one big mesh. Just yesterday I learnt that many present day Yemeni trace their roots to the Levant. Very different than farther regions like Afria, China, India and ofcourse the Americas, Australia etc.
Why would we go halfway around the world to create conflict when we could just make money somewhere where there is already conflict? Seems like a lot of extra work, no?
>let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years
That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.