[petcat]

> everyone knew was a bad idea

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.

[tyre]

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.

This was always stupid.

[logicchains]

>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.

[thisislife2]

> 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...

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[parineum]

> 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.

[watwut]

Iran was entitled to have radio active materia. Pretty much everyone involved says they followed the contract.

[parineum]

Who is "everyone involved"? Iran and the Obama administration?

What was bombed in that secret mountain base? Why keep it a secret?

[manyaoman]

The audacity of Iran building a bunker and not keeping us in the loop about what's going on inside.

[orwin]

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.

[stale2002]

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.

[YZF]

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.

[throwaway534634]

> 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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA

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].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal#Trump_admini...

[YZF]

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.

[YZF]

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.

[tyre]

I appreciate that you dug further into it.

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?

[Cyph0n]

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.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...

[ceejayoz]

No one’s putting a public traffic cam in the regime’s secret detention sites.

[Cyph0n]

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.

https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...

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.

[orwin]

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)

[Cyph0n]

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.

[jameshilliard]

> 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.

This seems far less likely than the most plausible scenarios, which is that most deaths were the result of IRGC terrorists opening fire into crowds of protesters for the purposes of ensuring they remain in power.

[jameshilliard]

> the 30k number is hogwash

30k is one estimate of actual deaths, it's expected to be higher than any verified number of deaths.

Most estimates fall into the range of 20k to 40k from my understanding so 30k is certainly plausible.

[orwin]

The absolute maximum number of deaths imputable to the IRGC during the winter revolt is 18k. Of that, only 7k have been verified, and of that, only 6k have been from protesters. The reason the 11k have been harder to verify is that most of them were in the fringe of the country, far from hospital, in rural area, and the fighting there was intense. A good part of the unverified 11k might have been civilians caught in the crossfire (an element of propaganda from the IRGC in Baluchistan is that separatists are terrorists targeting civilians, which is 'funny' (very relatively) because it looks a lot like western usual propaganda)

[_DeadFred_]

Some of the people the theocratic Islamic Regime murdered for wanting a little bit of freedom.

https://www.bbc.com/persian/resources/idt-c005edd8-7204-4c74...

[throw310822]

> the popular uprisings

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?

[ZeroGravitas]

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

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that...

[basilgohar]

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodian_kingdom

[YZF]

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...

[oa335]

compare list of conflicts in europe to those in middle east over past from 1000 AD - 1900AD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe

in particular state formation in late medieval and early modern europe saw immense bloodshed and turmoil.

middle east was comparatively peaceful in contrast, especially post mongol conquest.

e.g. compare 1700s and 1800s europe to middle east

[YZF]

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.

[peyton]

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?

[logicchains]

>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.