Probably something other than the one thing that would justify lifting the mid 90's fatwa declaring the creation, possession, and use of nuclear weapons against Islamic law.
How aware is this community of the Supreme Leader's staunch opposition to nuclear weapons?
They literally printed a bank note celebrating their nuclear program. The SL is not "staunchly opposed to nuclear weapons".
(I think the B-2 strikes were a terribly stupid idea and that Trump got rolled by Netanyahu here, but I'm not going to be negatively polarized into thinking the Iranian SL is a benign figure.)
Ok, I will take the bait. Two countries that are frequently noted as having the capability to build nuclear weapons is Japan and Korea. (For the purpose of this post, please assume with good faith that they don't have secret programmes to build nuclear weapons.) Both have world-leading civilian nuclear power programmes and at least part of the nuclear fuel cycle onshore. Side note: One thing that I never see discussed: As both countries are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Act, I assume that they have regular audits of their facilities by IEAE. (If they were consistently failing with major mishaps, or secret programmes, I am sure that we would read about it.) Both of them have incredibly sophisticated national scientific research programmes that could easily pursue nuclear weapons.
What is the difference between Japan & Korea vs Iran? It is simple: Trust. On the surface, sure, what you say might be true. However, it is hard to trust Iran as they so consistently threaten Israel. What do you think would happen if Iran had the bomb? They would lord over Israel and threaten them on the regular. This would be massively destabilizing for the region and world.
Final question: Is it harder to build a safe, civilian nuclear power programme compared to a (safe?) nuclear weapons programme? I don't know.
After Israel assassinated Haniyeh in July and launched an air strike on Beirut that killed 30+ people, some of which were civilians. Keep going on with this game though.
I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here. Do you think it's not public knowledge that Iran finances and orchestrates Hezbollah? Or is this the terrorism card? Maybe it's different when the US supports al-Zenki et al (or the many years of financial support and hands-off permission Israel gave Hamas and then encouraged Qatar to give Hamas).
I think Hezbollah has done some truly disgusting things and I have no delusions about the ill deeds of Iran's regime. But I think it's extremely fair to say that Israel is an even more egregious perpetrator of murder, displacement, and apartheid and Iranians have every right and reason to see themselves in solidarity with Palestinians and the people of Lebanon.
If it helps understand where I'm coming from, I don't think Hezbollah is (was?) a terrorist force at all. It was designed to be a near-peer military adversary against Israel (on paper) and Sunni militias (in reality). It is (was?) an instrument of the IRGC, with very little of its own agency; a genuine part of the Order of Battle of the Iranian military command.
I think this is all common knowledge? A brigadier general of the IRGC was in the room with Nasrallah when he was killed IIRC. I might quibble with "militia", which has legal ramifications I'm sure you're aware of. Maybe there are conspiratorial cranks who deny that's what Hezbollah is, but I'm not sure I know any people who would disagree with this. I believe Khamenei called Hezbollah and Nasrallah "his children" with pretty clear connotations being conveyed after Nasrallah was assassinated.
Right, so stuff about how terroristic Hezbollah is/was isn't motivating to me. I'm not more OK with strikes on Hezbollah because they were "terrorists"; they were a military force, the largest in Lebanon, operated by Iran, launching a continuous stream of rockets (several per day) into Israel. By any normal standards, an act of war by Iran.
I don't think "acts of war" mean much in real statecraft; there's no referee, things are what people say they are and outcomes are determined by military and economic power. But anyone going down that path has to recognize the hole Iran dug for itself here. They didn't have to do any of this.
But the people of Iran, for very obvious reasons, do not like the real leadership of Iran, and Iran does a lot of things just to keep that leadership structure intact.
Finally, and super-importantly: I think HN is just a weird place to have these kinds of discussions, and I'm very sure nobody who's angry at me about my takes on these things know what I actually believe about any of this stuff --- and why should they? What I believe about any of this is immaterial. Like every nerd, I'm motivated to comment when I see something I "know" to be wrong; that's all that's happening on these threads.
In this particular thread, I only appeared because I think the GBU-57 is a very goofy munition. I had previous to last week thought it was like some ultra-explosive "close as you can get to nuclear without being nuclear" kind of weapon. But nope, it's just a normal bomb strapped to a giant anvil. That's weird! Seems HN-y to comment on.
(But now I'm here and I see things like "the SL of Iran has declared nuclear weapons Haram" and, like, I'm not going to let that fly past! But also: not pretending there's anything useful about this discussion. If it's annoying to you, stop engaging! That's what I'm doing.)
> I don't think "acts of war" mean much in real statecraft; there's no referee, things are what people say they are and outcomes are determined by military and economic power. But anyone going down that path has to recognize the hole Iran dug for itself here. They didn't have to do any of this.
I'll preface this by saying I understand fixating on a small detail, and as evidenced by this thread, I readily engage in that. I also think the thing about the fatwa against nuclear weapons is a little silly, it seems like there are incredibly obvious, rational reasons for Iran to want a nuclear arsenal.
To back up to Oct 2024 (to make a different point, I'm not trying to take us further down the rabbit hole), I think it's worth pointing out how arbitrary it is to choose this moment in time as a point where Iran "dug a hole for itself". Presumably a moment of intervening agency that breaks from what came before and after. It's a vantage point that has no real significance to the broader conflict, doesn't tie to the beginning or end of anything significant. It's unclear why that moment in particular is where Iran could have set us on a different course, and why we should consider jettisoning the rest of historical baggage that lead up to that moment. And it has the whiff of being chosen arbitrarily to exculpate (or sideline any notion of) the United State's involvement in this conflict. It's the kind of detail I expect to see fixated on CNN, without any mention of events like Israel's former invasion of Lebanon, the impact of the Nakba and the One Million Plan on the surrounding Arab states, the Dulles brother's lead coup in Iran that deposed a secular, democratic leader, etc. Not that you even really need to go back that far, there's plenty of events proximate to 10/1/24 that lead to Iran launching missiles, like Israel staging a land invasion outside Lebanon.
I don't think that's what you're doing (I'd rather not speculate on why that moment is significant to you, and would be curious to hear your own take), but I want to explain why discourse like this becomes touchy. For some of us millennials, our defining political experience was seeing the United States become an incredibly sore loser via a problem of our own making (and infuriatingly, we apparently learned nothing from the consequences of funding the Mujahideen). We are obviously, also a victim of our own circumstances, no less than Iran, but we are also an agent of incomparable power in world events. And for many of us it became clear how carelessly, callously, and selfishly that power is wielded and how quickly we victimized ourselves and were unwilling to tolerate criticism. Aaron Sorkin wasn't even able to make the movie that depicted how much of a problem of our own making this was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Wilson%27s_War_(film)#...
All this to say, if you feel ganged up on, I get it and sympathize. I think you have good intentions here, and I'm sorry if I came in too hot. Some of us are just nauseated by our position in the world and culpability for all this harm, and are constantly frustrated by the hegemonic political discourse that is adamant to deflect criticism and prioritize American exceptionalism above all.
Oh, no, not at all. I don't come to HN to reconcile myself to what's happening in politics and foreign relations (possible exception: zoning; I'm a housing activist). I generally feel like in these kinds of discussions, I'm doing things right if neither pole of the argument happening on HN thinks I'm on their side; the only thing I'm sure about is that this stuff is complicated.
Thanks for the detailed response! I could pick at it, but that's not the spirit of where we're at at this point in the thread.
Oh, by the way: Charlie Wilson's War --- the book is much better than the movie.
Indeed. The lowest of the horses, however, is clearly the USA. Our history and our actions (POSIWID is the most effective heuristic in the modern information environment), including the capricious abandonment of the very successful JCPOA, suggest complete dishonesty in this realm. There is zero reason to believe we have any legitimate reason for attacking Iran and every reason to distrust our stated motivations. Iraq was 22 years ago.
We presented outright fabrications to the UN to justify an imperial war after the president campaigned against "nation building." It is hard to ignore the parallels to Iran and Trump, proclaimed "anti war" candidate that you had to vote for to prevent WW3. Here we are.
I am bathed in the light of heaven for my war is in service of justice and peace for all existence. Those who stand in opposition to these goals are an evolutionary dead-end. An answer to the Fermi Paradox.
My father, a middle-class mormon and far-right political enthusiast, once told me in the context of the conflicts in the Middle East, "people will die for their country, but they'll kill for their god." This harrowing indication of his radicalization nonetheless holds as a true and instructive maxim.
Who is your god? For most of America, it is power and the best proxy for power is the demigod of Money. Avarice and greed are in, Christlike works are out. Too woke.
It is literally possible to use all of this incredible technology and productive capacity to enable food security, high quality housing, access to healthcare, unlimited access to the wealth of all human knowledge and digitizable creations, while protecting our only habitable planet and nurturing its biosphere, and so much more, for all of humanity. Yet money and the desire for power will see billions suffer and die in the next century while mass global extinctions will only decelerate due to depletion of species.
Why can't we do better than the current environment of lawless global and domestic violence waged by the US government? It is barbarism.
It is possible that mistakes were made in the aftermath of WW2. It is possible that the victors have rewritten history in a favorable light -- in fact, that is the most reasonable expectation. This must not be used to justify genocide for if our society takes that path the victory against the Axis powers is meaningless and evil will have triumphed in the world.
Israel is more than Netanyahu and less than the Jewish people. Humanity must unite and destroy the power structures that incentivize the hyperscale atrocities we are currently manifesting.
Did I say the Supreme Leader is a benign figure? Iran has problems. Big ones.
You are disingenuous and malicious when you portray my position in this way. The Supreme Leader has a longstanding public opposition to nuclear weapons. He is the respected religious leader of the Iranian government. The actions of the Iranian government, including their adherence to the JCPOA that Trump capriciously discarded, are consistent with this fatwa.
You must provide some other justification for your stance than merely accepting the US propaganda.
We can just disagree about this and let the evidence people can find on their own speak for itself. I find the idea that the SL is "opposed to nuclear weapons" to be risible. Iran bought from AQ Khan!
It is extremely important to document the facile and childish level of argumentation within the industry whose hubris seeks to force the world into the period of its greatest calamities. Society failed to highlight the intellectual immaturity of the Nazis and it has yielded the material reality we exist in today.
Again, I appreciate your labor and contributions to the historical record.
Strict adherence to the JCPOA, capriciously discarded by the man who just bombed Iran in my name, suggests that Iran's position was legitimately held.
In fact, it implies that someone else is lying. Probably the country that just did a complete 180 on its intelligence assessment and attacked another country unprovoked, if you want my assessment.
It's not like the USA doesn't have a documented history of lying and engaging in information warfare to justify wars of choice. This isn't even our first time this century.
You might if a nuclear-armed genocidal pariah state backed by the most powerful and richest country in the world was obsessed with you. Especially if the superpower I've alluded to had previously installed its regime in your country.
You really should be ashamed to lie like this. Iran is the country that has said it is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Israel just wants to live in peace with Iran. But the current religious nutjobs in charge of Iran absolutely will not allow that to happen.
The bombing of Iran by Israel and the US is the result of Iran picking a fight with them since 1979.
Israel is actively engaged in a genocide and its ethnic cleansing program is fully supported by the USA, which is currently engaged in its own domestic ethnic cleansing through violent and illegal kidnappings by heavily armed, erratic, masked, unidentified secret police. The American genocide is informed by and its gestapo trained in Israeli doctrine.
Innocent children are being maimed, starved, and murdered and it is being done with materiel produced with my tax dollars and provided with the bipartisan endorsement of my government.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not perfect, they have promulgated many evils within their society. The USA is directly responsible for the rise of fundamentalism and sociopolitical precarity within Iran, but even that pales in the light of the disgusting atrocities being committed today by the traitorous US government. Iran has issues, but their biggest issue is the existential threat of the American-Israeli alliance against their sovereignty.
This is absolutely not true. Hamas is actively attempting to destroy Israel. I really hate this watering down of the word "genocide". Terms like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" have specific meanings that shouldn't be diluted through overuse.
"The USA is directly responsible for the rise of fundamentalism and sociopolitical precarity within Iran"
Don't remove agency from the Iranians. THEY chose an Islamic Theocracy all on their own after the Shah was overthrown. You "merica evil" types really like to remove agency from people.
"USA, which is currently engaged in its own domestic ethnic cleansing "
I truly, truly hate Trump and think what ICE is doing is stupid and sadistic but calling it "ethnic cleansing" is completely absurd. The federal government does have the constitutional authority to deport non-citizens.
"Iran has issues, but their biggest issue is the existential threat of the American-Israeli alliance against their sovereignty."
Iran's biggest issue is that they constantly try to pick fights with MUCH stronger countries. They have spend every second since 1979 antagonizing the US and Israel in a profoundly foolish way. Compare this to how Vietnam doesn't hold a grudge against the US and benefits greatly from having a normal relationship with it.
"Israel can't do genocide because it is Jewish and it is their right" is a fascist Big Lie, right up there with "The America people cannot do genocide because the USA is an inherently Good actor and entitled to the things it takes."
I am targeted in an ongoing campaign of eradication by the US government. I was born in the USA and my parents parents parents were too. Genocide is as obvious as the light of the sun.
Humans who have retained their ability to process information in an adversarial environment do not struggle to identify such obvious moral failures.
"I am targeted in an ongoing campaign of eradication by the US government"
You are completely and utterly delusional. Heavy handed deportation is NOT eradication. You really need to see reality for what it is and not what you need it to be. Go ask everyone you know if they agree with your usage of the word "genocide".
Probably something other than the one thing that would justify lifting the mid 90's fatwa declaring the creation, possession, and use of nuclear weapons against Islamic law.
How aware is this community of the Supreme Leader's staunch opposition to nuclear weapons?
This is pure imperialism.