Well let's not forget stuxnet... Iran hasn't been left uncontested. They have faced considerable setbacks along the way. They've been trying to develop [all of the things you need for nuclear weapons] for some time, and more recently had been accelerating those efforts.
Netanyahu may exaggerate the imminence of an Iranian nuke, but the reason Iran hasn't built a nuke is because Israel has been repeatedly setting Iran back in its progress over the years.
The single biggest setback was the JCPOA or the "Iran nuclear deal," which Netanyahu pressured Trump to unilaterally renege on.
Between this and Ukraine, the entire world knows now that even agreements with the previously highly-trusted counterparty of the USA won't keep you safe. Only nuclear weapons can keep you safe.
The deal was on only for about 3 years. Iran has been enriching to some extent since 2009. I'd would think there was a lot more in setting it back than a failed deal.
Iran did not have the tech to get beyond 20% at the time. The deal gave them time and funds for that, which is hardly nonproliferation work.
>Clearly that was all for nothing, so no country will ever agree to a similar deal ever again.
Well, yeah, bombing Libya was a huge error, so you end up between a bad deal and bombings. But that's inconvenient politically so nobody mentions who was President then.
Except for the part that it reduced proliferation, reduced stockpiles, and dramatically increased breakout time...? You think a workable solution is to just keep a country perpetually impoverished so it never even has the money required to learn how to enrich?
You don't understand the logic of nuclear weapons, do you?
As Ali Bhutto said: "We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get our own [nuclear weapon].... We have no other choice!”
> Well, yeah, bombing Libya was a huge error, so you end up between a bad deal and bombings
>Except for the part that it reduced proliferation, reduced stockpiles, and dramatically increased breakout time
The breakout time was _reduced_ in the long run, since Iran was allowed to keep stocks and enrich (limits were to be removed starting from 2026 up to 2031).
>You think a workable solution is to just keep a country perpetually impoverished so it never even has the money required to learn how to enrich
They could just give up.
>You don't understand the logic of nuclear weapons, do you?
I do. They want it for offensive purposes, so it's best to handle it when it's easy. It would have been easier to handle AlQaeda without the risk of Pakistani nukes falling to it.
>Say more. What's the relevance?
Literally read the other talking points on the thread on how signing disarmament deals are cuz see how Qadaffi ended up. US did not have to make that choice.
Breakout time was not reduced lol. You have a deal, then you get another deal, then you get another deal.
"I just got a 1 year discount with a vendor"
The wise man lowered his head and muttered: "No, you have earned a price increase in 12 months."
> They could just give up.
Which makes literally no sense, as we are seeing. The only sensible move for any country is to develop a nuclear weapon as quickly and secretly as possible.
>The only sensible move for any country is to develop a nuclear weapon as quickly and secretly as possible.
That's in contradiction, no? Except there never was any plan or idea on how to get another deal. Iran would have been in a position where no deal was possible, and all the same arguments against what happened now would actually apply against a x100 stronger Iran.
I get the feeling you're willfully playing dumb, but to take it step by step:
Now, after having proven that deals mean nothing both in Ukraine and Iran, the only sensible move is to develop nuclear weapons.
Prior to us having broken both of these deals, there was a believable argument for the US being an honest broker who can ensure security in lieu of you having your own nuclear weapons.
> Except there never was any plan or idea on how to get another deal
What do you mean? You do the same thing again: economic normalization for non-proliferation.
Ukraine started in 2014. Libya in 2011. The truth of the world was already clear at that point, as well as Iranian intentions. The JCPOA was never going to handle a Iranian nuke but would have facilitated it. You cannot use economic incentives to fix a broken world, and Iran had many other motives for nukes.
Facilities deep in a mountain, no IAEA access, refusal to negotiate, October 7th, ... You'd have to be quite naive to think it's all above board. (Instead of under a mountain).
Let's be clear Iran is the bad guy. But so was Saddam Hussein and he didn't have the weapons they said he did.
On Fox News they'll tell you nuclear war is imminent but they say that because they want to bomb, not because it's true or not. They're only justifying their actions, not reacting to a threat.
I don't watch Fox News. Blair and Bush lying about Iraq, doesn't mean Iran isn't working towards weapons. I'm all for prosecuting Blair and Bush, always have been. This is not a matter in which you can just sit back and say "well, hopefully it's all innocent". Iran had to be open - they were the opposite.
> Blair and Bush lying about Iraq, doesn't mean Iran isn't working towards weapons
You're correct. However, Netanyahu also claimed that Iran was behind the two assassination attempts on Trump during the campaign trail. A laughably transparent lie obviously designed to woo Trump. Then there's that this war is politically very convenient for him as it distracts from some Knesset political drama, increasing international criticism of the Gaza situation, and it obstructs Trump's attempts at a politician solution with Iran.
I don't know if Iran has nuclear weapons. Clearly they've been playing with fire for a long time but that doesn't mean they actually have nuclear weapons. But I consider anything the Netanyahu government says as deeply and profoundly untrustworthy. So colour me highly sceptical on it all.
Iraq was also not giving sufficient access to inspectors, which was one of the reasons people were convinced he did have WMDs. Things like "you can just sit back and say 'well, hopefully it's all innocent'" is pretty much what people were saying at the time as well.
Wars have unpredictable outcomes, all of this may very well cause more problems than it solves.
The alternatives were that they were enriching well beyond peaceful thresholds primarily for leverage in negotiations, or that they wanted "breakout" capability, so they could build multiple bombs quickly, if they ever chose to. But these alternatives can still be unacceptable from the standpoint of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation.
Iran is one of the top producers or radiopharmaceuticals from highly enriched materials including uranium. This should be unsurprising because Iran has a natural abundance of radioactive isotopes- the background radiation of spots in Iran is extremely high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Iran
There are some ridiculous pro-palestine/anti-israel takes out there that says that the politics of the region are more stable when Iran has nuclear weapons.
Israel has been talking about the threat for some time and Iran over time has broadened its nuclear program and has enriched more and more Uranium to higher and higher levels.
Why does Iran need all this enriched Uranium? Why is it investing so much in this? Why does it invest so much in its ballistic missile program?
Would Israel be a threat to Iran if Iran didn't continuously declare it wants to wipe Israel off the map and take all these actions to follow up on that?
Israel is tiny. It can't afford the risk of a regime that openly declares it wants to wipe it off the map and has acted towards that goal to get nuclear missiles.
One of the problems is that we became the defenders of Israel. And it's a situation we created when we created a religious extremist government in Iran.
The US and Israel have a long standing partnership. During the cold war the USSR backed Syria and Egypt (E.g.) and the US backed Israel. That was not different than other places in the world where the US pushed back against soviet expansion. Unlike Europe though there was never a formal defense pact. Also unlike Europe there were actual wars with people getting killed.
I'm not sure the US "created" the religious extremist government in Iran. It's a complicated story. But the Shah was hated and like other similar dictators to date the US was happy to support that regime and turn a blind eye to the atrocities against the Iranian citizenry. Just like it is happy to work with other dictatorial regimes today as long as their interests align. When the revolution happened the Ayatollah was already well positioned to take advantage of the situation. Many of the people who rose up were eventually lined up against the wall and executed, like tends to happen in these revolutions.
- it's disgusting that the USA is always like, oops, my bad, we messed up when we helped you kill all those people, we were doing our best (sometimes in the case of Iraq going back and forth three times!)
- now that we're here, not sure what else we can do (we shouldn't let Iran fund proxy wars and have nukes)
The US messed up a lot of things e.g. in the Americas. Before them the Europeans also messed plenty of stuff up.
But the US has also at times been a positive force.
I don't think the way to fix "messing up" that is to just disappear and step away. Like it or not, the US is the leader of the free world. Retreating means people like Putin and Xi and going to step into the vacuum.
But I agree the US should act responsibly. I'm also unsure where the current path is leading. It is weird that you declare two weeks for negotiations and then you attack though I'm pretty sure the negotiations would have led nowhere.
