[bulbar]

To the contrary, the war has proven to Iran how critical their nuclear program is to the regime's, and maybe Iran's, survival.

US wouldn't go into such a war against Russia, because of their nuclear program. They wouldn't have attacked Iran if they already had a standing nuclear program with strategic nuclear weaponary.

What are their options now? Strategically focus on rebuilding their defense capabilities with most likely the same result in 10-25 years or strategically focus on nuclear weapons so that adversaries won't rage war against them like that again in 10-25 years?

[gyanchawdhary]

You are theoretically right to assume this but practically this will never happen (i.e iran's nuclear ambitions) .. let me explain

As Putin once quipped, "having the desire to do something is very different from having the ability to do something" ..

Iran can desire as much as they like to "want" and "have" a nuclear program .. but the objective truth is that US just crushed the intellectual and philosophical source of this desire by eliminating their rolodex of ayatollahs ... whether you agree or not with this approach is a different matter but US has been successful in scrubbing the source of that desire so aggressively that the new hopefuls are simply exhausted to play the nuclear long game ..

Now at a personal note, I live between Dubai and London (previously Hamburg) and all these places have a significant Iranian diaspore and not a single one of those people in my circle is against what the US did and is doing in Iran ..

What hilarious though is that some HN folks have such vitriolic hate for Trump (based on the comments of the OP's post) that they'd rather see Iran have a nuclear capability than admitting that the defanging of Iran's nuclear program has been a good thing for the world ...

[defrost]

> and not a single one of those people in my circle is against what the US did and is doing in Iran ..

Interestingly the Iranians I've talked to (Eg: a married couple both with nuclear physics degrees from Iran who bailed out long long ago) would prefer to see Iran still being monitored and kept in check - they are concerned that Trump has not defanged the HEU program, merely scattered and set it back somewhat, while at the same time increasing the likelihood of rogue use of HEU and or those cache's being fed into an actual unchecked weapons program elsewhere.

A big issue, not so much discussed, is where exactly has the HEU ended up, in how many parts, and under whose control. Was it buried under rubble? Is it secure in a void? Was it moved and sequestered into multiple parts before Trump went loco?

[HDThoreaun]

Expats are expats for a reason. They tend to not be aligned with the domestic views of the country they left. Often the leave exactly because their politics are incompatible with local ideology.

[fragmede]

Depends why they're expats so "they tend to" have lots of different reasons for immigrating. Iranian Nuclear scientists living abroad have different reasons for doing compared to Americans living in Tijuana. Culturally, there's a tendency to be more conservative to keep the values and norms of the old country, when the old country has moved on.

[bigyabai]

Your argument here is disjointed. The claims that, 1) Iran does not desire a nuclear device, and 2) The United States was justified in striking the IRGC do nothing to refute the parent.

"Practically" speaking, this deal is not any more potent than the JCPOA pinkie-promise. It returns us to the status quo of hoping that Iran doesn't develop a nuclear weapon, which was the exact same flimsy flypaper logic that failed to stop South Africa and North Korea from making their nukes.

If the goal of this war is to denuclearize Iran, then it has failed on both accounts. Justified or not, the US air campaign eg. Midnight Hammer failed to prevent escalation and deprive Iran of access to their nuclear material. The domestic uranium mines, centrifuge factories, nuclear equipment stockpiles and underground missile cities all appear to have survived the strikes. Desire it or not, Iran has nuclear research within their reach, and Israel will continue to use it to manufacture support for a bloody land invasion.

> they'd rather see Iran have a nuclear capability than admitting that the defanging of Iran's nuclear program has been a good thing for the world

Again, this argument is disconnected. Nuclear proliferation is widely detested, which is why this war has been so seriously criticized. America's air campaign would not defang Iran's nuclear program, officers knew this going into the conflict and warned that the collateral damage would not be worth the outcome.

Even if this conflict did succeed in deterring Iran from a nuclear bomb, then it's a return to the 2017-era status quo that Trump disrupted by ripping up the JCPOA. From a nonproliferation standpoint, this was a bloody and pointless war.

[gyanchawdhary]

ok