This completely ignores the shareholder value to the military industrial complex and the truth machine value of prediction markets from the not-insider traders.
The US' limitations in its ability to project power have been exposed. Having American bases in the middle east has been shown to be nothing but a liability for host countries. And Iran has proven that it can withstand anything the US is willing to throw at it, and hit back hard, over a relatively prolonged period.
And Iran has shown that its constitution is strong and power succession is effective even after a massive decapitation strike. There was seemingly zero turmoil, control appears to have been maintained without issue.
And Iran's non nuclear option of controlling the strait has been tested andd shown to be highly effective.
And Iran has gained significant operational experience with its massive stores of drones and missles.
And the US has lost multiple billion dollar intelligence installations in the region.
And Americans have been made aware of the Israel lobby like never before, and Trump is in a very difficult position heading into the midterms.
> And Iran has proven that it can withstand anything the US is willing to throw at it, and hit back hard, over a relatively prolonged period.
Absolutely not. But Trump made two huge mistakes: 1) not imposing the naval blockade from the very start, 2) stopping the military offensive after only roughly a month, when about 50% of the Iranian missile stockpile was still intact. We must resume combat operations, bomb Iran until they are unable to fire back, and use their frozen funds to pay for damages to neighboring countries. It is absurd to offer Iran sanctions relief or "reparations," and makes Trump look incredibly weak.
Other things should also be done in parallel, such as actively hunting down and sinking Iran's "shadow fleet" of vessels, around the world and relentlessly until they are unable to export a single drop of oil by sea. We could also take their bridges and railroads and further deal a huge blow to trade with other nations by land. An invading force isn't needed for any of this.
which is of course the real kicker, The Gulf states are going to pay for the adventure and deal with an emboldened Iran and their damaged economies and infrastructure. Having US bases in the region has turned from a security guarantee into a disaster, the implications of this are pretty obvious.
...and then you woke up and realised that Iran never allowed those inspectors to inspect the actually important facilities and started removing inspectors from the country in 2023 under Biden.
During the time of JCPOA (original, between Iran and the P5+1) inspectors had access to where they wanted to go (sometimes with friction, sure) and were able to place tamper resistant / tamper revealing instrumentation, air filters, and spectrometers - effectively creating a data record that could place a stochastic cap on {enrichment level, volume}.
After Trump ripped up that agreement during his first term, withdrawing from the pact in 2018, that was no longer the case - leading to your linked 2023 statement.
The JCPOA was a huge mistake. Even assuming that it truthfully capped enrichment and prevented the development of an atomic bomb, at the same time it enriched the nation and therefore allowed Iran to finance terrorism and ballistic missiles.
Biden was elected _after_ Trump broke the deal so it's unclear why you think that tells us anything about what would have happened had the United States honored the treaty.
The crisis exists because Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. That's the root issue.
JCPOA was never a permanent solution. Under JCPOA, Iran agreed to temporarily cap enrichment for 15 years until 2030. After which, Iran could enrich freely.
JCPOA had no extension framework, the deal could not be extended without being renegotiated. And Iranian officials refused to agree to permanent enrichment caps, they said the 15-year sunset on enrichment was a non-negotiable.
That's a badly misleading framing of the situation.
The U.S. intelligence community said for more than a year that Iran was weeks away from enriching uranium further to bomb grade, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
"That is extremely worrisome but that is not weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and not weeks away from having a nuclear weapon that can be loaded on a nuclear missile," Kimball said.
"My understanding from non-governmental sources and the internal assessment of the (intelligence community) is that they believe it would take several months or more to fashion the highly enriched uranium bomb grade into a nuclear device, and one to two years to manufacture a small light nuclear device," Kimball said.
Former Iranian Majles member Ali Motahari said in an April 24, 2022 interview on ISCA News (Iran) that when Iran began developing its nuclear program, the goal was to build a nuclear bomb. He said that there is no need to beat around the bush, and that the bomb would have been used as a "means of intimidation" in accordance with a Quranic verse about striking "fear in the hearts of the enemies of Allah."
"When we began our nuclear activity, our goal was indeed to build a bomb,” former Iranian politician Ali Motahari told ISCA News. “There is no need to beat around the bush,” he said.
When asked if saying this publicly will negatively affect the ongoing JCPOA negotiations, Motahari answered: "Nobody notices what I am saying."
He wasn't a member at the time of those statements nor did he have any involvement in their nuclear program. That's misleading to say the least.
Ali Motahari—former member of Iran’s Parliament—clarified that the interview dates back to May 2022, when he neither held a parliamentary seat nor any official role in nuclear affairs.[0]
So besides a single guy in Iran, are there official delegations that have concluded Iran was developing nuclear weapons? The US has had two National Intelligence Estimates, which consists of all 18 agencies in the intelligence community, conclude that they were not developing nukes.
The core reason those sunset dates exist is because Iranian officials stated that a sunset on enrichment limits was a non-negotiable. They would not sign a deal without them.
Claiming "agreements are renegotiated and extended" is hypothetical. What incentive does Iran have to agree to enrichment caps post-2030? Why would Iran give up its strongest negotiating card, its nuclear program?
> Claiming "agreements are renegotiated and extended" is hypothetical.
What's not hypothetical is that, under the deal, they agreed to not enrich until 2030. What's not hypothetical is that Trump abandoned the deal, with nothing to replace it, allowing them to start enriching in 2017 instead.
And if you're going to claim that renegotiation is hypothetical, then you also have to agree that any other possible future outcome, including one in which Iran develops a functional nuclear weapon, is also hypothetical.