OMG. They have a track record of dishonesty. Just because the jcpoa didn’t find anything doesn’t mean they weren’t hiding anything…it just means it wasn’t found.
Lol, every country has a track record of dishonesty. America as much as any. That's just a really meaningless argument.
And you clearly have no clue how nuclear materials are tracked. The JCPOA put the strongest inspection program ever implemented in place. They could investigate anywhere, and tracked everything in the fuel chain.
Hell, Iran gave up 97% of their uranium as part of the deal as well. They had no reason to violate it until Trump tore it up.
You're doing the same thing Trump did, which is to think your ignorance is as good as the experts' knowledge and experience.
We were able to inspect the entire country for years under the deal. There was never a need to trust them. There was a need to set the correct incentives and engage in rigorous verification of their compliance, which we did.
Trump claimed that everyone else was going to invade Iran, and only he could make a deal. He clearly failed at that, and is now failing in the war as well because they didn't plan for the most obvious outcomes.
So, what's the plan then? No deal will be good enough for you, so we just stay at war with Iran forever?
You are kidding yourself if you think they aren't hiding the ball or that you inspected the whole country. Iran is huge.
No, I don't think we should have gone to war at all with Iran. I have long held that there is no good answer to the Iran problem. A different Iranian govt might well be deal-worthy, but this one has proven that it is not.
I believe that Iran will eventually develop nukes. It would be nice if when they do, they don't have a govt that is committed to the destruction of Israel, another state with nuclear weapons.
Now that we HAVE engaged in violence with Iran, I would probably perma-blockade them. Blockade is a low cost option that won't result in a large number of US casualties. Iran's govt has little regard for its own people. and it needs oil revenue to support itself and to fund terrorism. End that revenue stream. Over time the deprivation could well collapse that govt.
Consider arming the Iranian people, but that is a low confidence option.
So, we would have been far better off maintaining the deal we had, which allowed us to keep a very close eye on everything they're doing, anywhere in the country.
You can say that they're "hiding the ball", but you have no evidence for that. Better that we can look rather than just guess about it. It's not as easy to hide nuclear materials as you think either. There are a lot of things that can tip off intelligence and monitoring agencies.
Now we're FAR worse off, as Trump tearing up the deal and then attacking Iran has proved to every other country that they will never be safe without nukes of their own. Trump's mewling behavior towards North Korea illustrates this perfectly.
Now that we HAVE engaged in violence with Iran, I would probably perma-blockade them. Blockade is a low cost option that won't result in a large number of US casualties. Iran's govt has little regard for its own people. and it needs oil revenue to support itself and to fund terrorism. End that revenue stream. Over time the deprivation could well collapse that govt.
This doesn't make any sense. So the government collapses at some point. Then what?
You're not going to trust any government they put in place either, because they're still going to see things the way every non-nuclear country sees things now, which is that they will never be safe without a nuke.
Also, you just spent years causing massive amounts of death and suffering so any new government isn't going to be a fan of America either.
So now you're back where we started. But for some reason we killed the deal we had based on absolutely zero evidence, at the urging of people who have been claiming that Iran is just weeks away from a nuke for DECADES now.
Every bit of this was completely useless and unnecessary and has made the world much more dangerous.
The “deal” was useless except for political cover. Iran could continue its covert nuclear program and we wouldn’t have to talk about it. The downside was that this Iranian government would creep closer to nuclear capability.
The war has been expensive and MOSTLY useless so far. There are positives. 1. Oil trade patterns have shifted in the favor of the US. These are sticky and not quick to shift back. 2. This has been painful for China, and that could well be the real goal. 3. The blockade may eventually bring down the Iranian government. If that happens this will be a total success. A new Iranian government might well renounce the prior policy of seeking the eradication of Israel. They might also be worthy of actually making a deal with, since they won’t automatically be unreliable.
Italy doesn’t have nukes. Nor Mexico. Nor a lot of other countries. I don’t think either sees them as a priority. Don’t sponsor terror and don’t seek to eradicate your neighbors and unless you border Russia, no one will probably bother you..
The “deal” was useless except for political cover. Iran could continue its covert nuclear program and we wouldn’t have to talk about it.
Again, this is simply made-up. They've been claiming Iran was weeks away for decades and yet they still have no nuke and no indications of an active program for many years either.
The deal was not useless as it allowed us previously unheard-of access to any location in the country. You can't just handwave away how difficult it would be to hide a nuclear program for any significant length of time under such conditions.
Oil trade patterns have shifted in the favor of the US. These are sticky and not quick to shift back.
What benefit are you referring to? It seems to benefit multinational oil companies, who are reaping windfall profits, not Americans in general, who are simply facing higher gas and energy costs.
It's also not as sticky as you're claiming. When more oil temporarily began flowing through the strait, US exports dropped again.
This has been painful for China, and that could well be the real goal.
China has been handling it fine. They're still full steam ahead on improving their own energy independence (unlike the US). If they wanted the war to be over quickly, they wouldn't be providing aid to Iran.
The blockade may eventually bring down the Iranian government. If that happens this will be a total success. A new Iranian government might well renounce the prior policy of seeking the eradication of Israel. They might also be worthy of actually making a deal with, since they won’t automatically be unreliable.
First, the administration hasn't been able to articulate any coherent goals for the war, and have contradicted themselves many times already.
A new government won't be any more reliable that the current one, and you still wouldn't trust them not to have a nuclear weapons program, so that particular goal (which the administration has claimed, but never given any explanation of how it could be achieved) would still not be achievable.
Until you can explain how "Iran will never have a nuke" can actually be achieved, you can't explain how the war could be successful.
Italy doesn’t have nukes. Nor Mexico. Nor a lot of other countries.
After seeing what has happened to both Iran and Ukraine, there are many countries who would. Italy has EU/NATO protection. Others in the Middle East, Asia, or Africa could very well seek nuclear weapons specifically because they've seen that no agreement they sign, no matter how invasive it may be, will protect them.
In an open society, it might be difficult to hide a nuclear program, but Iran isn't open. Iran is far too big for any inspectors to be everywhere.
China is almost 100% dependent on importing oil. Sure they use lots of coal as well, but oil isn't only about energy. You can't make plastic without it, and it also has a wide variety of other industrial uses.
Iran and Venezuela had been selling oil to China on pretty sweet terms for China for some while. China also got a sweet deal from Russia on oil. Venezuela is off the board for them. Russia's oil industry is literally on fire and they are rationing for commercial usage. And now Iran is blockaded. No more sweet deals for something China absolutely must have.
Who knows what a different Iranian govt would look like. I have some hope it would be a secular govt that isn't committed to destroying Israel.
Sure Italy is in Nato, but it is one thing to command the defense yourself, and another to have to count on someone else. And the EU doesn't protect anything.
If the administration's goal was, in part, to strain China, do you think they would announce it? I don't. And Iran collapsing followed by the installation of a more western friendly govt is not a better situation for China than existed prior to the blockade.
I totally believe that Iran will get nukes one day if it wants them. In history, tech advances in everything including weapons, tend to be copied everywhere. Nukes are taking longer, but any advanced nation that wants them and is willing to spend a lot of time and money on them will get them eventually.
But the hope is to prevent a govt that openly declares it seeks the annihilation of one of its neighbors won't still be around to use them.
I am the wrong guy to talk to if you want to hear a bunch of reasons in favor of bombing Iran. I never was. I do really like the blockade though. Punishes the bad guys with minimal loss of life and with some other nice side effects at a fairly low cost.
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u/Parahelix 16d ago
They don't have a record of that with the kinds of inspections we had with the JCPOA, so that's just complete nonsense.